Monday, October 16, 2017

Brad Voracek — Reimagining “right-to-work”

“Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.” This is Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights declared by the UN in 1948. It sounds like a pretty good right to me. That’s why when I learned about “right-to-work” states in America I was dumbfounded. I thought we were fulfilling this right in my own country and I hadn’t even heard about it! Why were people still unemployed if we had a right to work?

It only took a few minutes of research to find out that the “right-to-work” laws some states have are nothing like the fundamental human right. What these laws actually do is defend a worker’s right not to be required to join a labor union to work at a company....
Hey, the essence of capitalism is free-riding, also known as rentierism.

The Minskys
Reimagining “right-to-work”
Brad Voracek

4 comments:

Andrew Anderson said...

Every law-abiding citizen should have the right to not be a wage-slave either, wouldn't you say, Tom? Nor a debt-slave?

Then why do we have government privileges for private debt/credit creation, the means by which so many have lost family farms and businesses and increasingly, due to (unethically financed) automation, even their wage-slave jobs?

Matt Franko said...

"wage-slave"

No such thing...

Noah Way said...

wage slave noun, a person wholly dependent on income from employment, typically employment of an arduous or menial nature.

Tom Hickey said...

wage slave noun, a person wholly dependent on income from employment, typically employment of an arduous or menial nature.

That would include most of the jobs created since the Great Recession.