Thursday, January 26, 2012

Indiana Becomes The Country’s 23rd Right To Work State

Rep. Scott Reske, D-Pendleton, stands outside of the House of Representatives during a debate on the right to work bill at the Statehouse Wednesday in Indianapolis. (AP)

Indiana, in the heart of the industrial Midwest and where about 10 percent of the work force is unionized, is now the country’s 23rd right to work state.

The law passed Wednesday night by the Indiana House of Representatives and is expected to be quickly signed by Governor Mitch Daniels.

Twenty-two states, mostly in the South, are right to work states. That means that unions can no longer require non-members to pay mandatory fees for representing them in workplaces.

It’s a blow to unions who fear right to work fever could spread to other rust belt states.

Guest:

Michelene Maynard, senior editor of the public radio project Changing Gears, she also blogs about the auto industry for Forbes.com

Other stories from Thursday's show

New Poll Shows Florida Primary Race Tightens To Dead Heat
Memos Reveal Israeli Spies Posing As CIA Agents
Indiana Becomes The Country’s 23rd Right To Work State
Busting The Myths About The President
‘The Greatest Paper Map Of The United States You’ll Ever See’
Music From The Show
Full Rundown

We welcome comments from all of our listeners. Post below. Please stay on topic and be civil. Comments may be moderated by us, but you are solely responsible for the content of your comments.

Jcollins5222

I wish you could have found someone more knowledgeable to speak to this important issue, Robin. You were pulling teeth for Ms. Maynard to state the obvious–that unions need dues to pay the costs of negotiating contracts and representing employees in grievances, hire lawyers, etc.–which Ms. Maynard still never stated, in spite of the opportunities you offered. Instead, she talked about unions needing dues for political purposes. Now, organized workers who refuse to pay their fair share of dues will get a free ride.
Kwmsmilw

Robin, you need to do a little background research before discussing topics with which you are unfamiliar. The very fact that you insisted on calling union dues “fees” shows your ignorance about union structure, rationale, and history. And you said something like “they refer to it as right-to-work” as if it’s a new term – it isn’t, and there’s a whole history there that you apparently are unaware of.
Ravenscrafte

LOL Right to starvation wages and no health care is more like it! Unfortunatey it sounds good to say right to work, makes people associate it with other good things like free speach etc. IT is purposely misleading having foolishly moved to the god forsaken south from the intellectaul north I can verify that poverty follows anti unionism. and of course ignorance follows poverty and feeds on it.
Anonymous

Congratulations Indiana for being yet another State to take a step back from Marxism. Sure the union thugs will scream like schoolgirls, let em’, their days are numbered.
Logic or Stupidity

Soon will will all be working twelve hour days with no lunch or break, just like they did seventy years ago. Wait a minute… that’s why we had to have Unions in the first place… Corporations came into existence and had no regard for basic human rights when hiring employees! Human body functions and physical limits got in the way of profits.

Amyweaverx6

Isn’t that why all the other governmental agencies exist??? What do we pay the dept of labor for?? I guess they just sit around picking their noses too like the rest of them! Why should someone be forced to pay into an entity that they don’t believe in??!!

With Sponsorship from:

Accelerating the pace of engineering and science