Des Moines Register
02-18-07
Elbert: Unions put existence at risk with 'fair share'
By DAVID ELBERT
REGISTER BUSINESS EDITOR
Iowa labor leaders have a pretty good head of steam in their bid to overturn
Iowa's 60-year right-to-work law.
Their "fair share" legislation appears to be on a fast track to sail through the
Legislature and onto the desk of Gov. Chet Culver, who has promised to sign it.
Given all the new faces in the Legislature, it would be foolish to predict an outcome. But history and the principle of majority rule are lined up against organized labor on this issue, and that could make overturning the law a lot tougher than some folks think.
Let me explain.
By now most of us recognize the phrase "right to work" as an anti-union term. It was created by Republicans intent on rolling back what they believed were excessive gains won by unions from New Deal Democrats in the 1930s.
When Republicans gained control of Congress, they passed the Taft-Hartley Act over the veto of President Truman in 1947. The law allowed states to opt out of a
1935 federal law legalizing compulsory union shops, where all workers at a unionized company are required to join the union.
Since 1947, 22 states have adopted right-to-work laws, which prevent compulsory union membership at companies with recognized unions.
Iowa was one of the first in 1947. Oklahoma was the most recent to do so in
2001.
Despite heated debate, academics say no one has been able to show definitive economic differences that are attributable to right-to-work laws.
During a legislative hearing last week, Peter Fisher, a University of Iowa economist, asked: "Why would a unionized company care how many of its workers paid how much to the union" in the form of dues?
Right-to-work isn't a factor when businesses decide where to locate or relocate, agreed Iowa State University's Peter Orazem , although the clumping of rightto-work states creates interesting geography. Right-to-work states are generally

in the South and Great Plains regions. Non-right-to-work are generally in the
Northeast, Midwest and along the Pacific Coast.
"Places that have grown most rapidly are right-to-work states, but I don't think it's because of right-to-work," said economist Orazem. "It's because they're in the
South and West, and those are areas growing more rapidly for reasons unrelated to unions."
To date, no state that adopted right-to-work has repealed it, he said.
One reason might be the appeal of the name.
"The guy who coined the term 'right-to-work' won the debate right there," said U of I labor economist George Neumann. "Forget all the other intellectual arguments." Who can argue against someone's right to work?
It's taken nearly 60 years for organized labor to come up with a term, "fair share," with equal branding appeal.
Fair share, labor leaders say, means simply that non-union members should pay their share of union costs, because the union is required to represent those workers on pay and grievance issues.
It's an old concept with a new name. The same principle was called an "agency shop" by an earlier generation.
The idea won backing from Iowa's Democratic Gov. Harold Hughes in 1964 when
Democrats gained control of the Iowa House and Senate for the first time in 30 years.
In 1965, the heavily Democratic Iowa House voted 75-46 to overturn Iowa's rightto-work law, but the effort failed in the Senate, when seven Democrats voted with
Republicans against the change.
This year marks the first time since 1965-66 that Democrats have controlled both houses of the Iowa General Assembly and the governorship. So, it's not surprising that labor would again seek to repeal right-to-work.
What is surprising is that Jim Nussle, the Republican candidate for governor, didn't raise right-to-work as a campaign issue last fall.
A lot of Republicans are wondering today why he didn't.
One theory is that most Iowans considered the issue a dead horse. It had been decades since anyone mounted a serious effort to overturn the law.

Another theory is that Nussle had his own backing from union members in the building trades and didn't want to give them a reason to vote against him.
Still another theory is that while Republicans knew they were going to lose the
Iowa Senate, they didn't think they would lose control of the Iowa House, which they did.
In any event, while Democrats control the House and Senate today, their margins are not nearly as large as in 1965.
Their majority in the House this year is 54-46, compared with 101-23 in 1965.
The Senate Democratic majority is 30-20, compared with 34-24 in 1965.
In 1965, 24 Democrats in the House and seven in the Senate crossed party lines to vote to keep right-to-work. This year, all it will take to block a change is five
House Democrats and six Democrats in the Senate.
So, the math isn't nearly as compelling this year as it was in 1965.
It's even less compelling when you look at what's happened to unions during the past 40 years.
In 1965, 27 percent of Iowa workers belonged to unions. Today, about 10 percent do.
"It isn't obvious to me what unions would gain" if right-to-work is repealed, said
ISU's Orazem.
According to one national study, unions in Iowa already collect dues from about
83 percent of workers who are covered by collective bargaining contracts, compared with 90 percent nationally.
Iowa unions "would gain a little bit in terms of revenue," said Orazem, but they also run a big risk if the law passes.
The risk is decertification.
It works like this: While a lot of unions already have close to 100 percent membership among workers, there are a fair number of unions where membership is little more than 50 percent. There are anecdotal reports, Orazem said, of a few unions where fewer than 50 percent of workers are dues-paying members.
If the Iowa law passes, more than a few people think that unions with low memberships run a big risk of having nonunion members demand a vote to decertify the union.

Changing the law so that unions can take money out of the paychecks of nonunion members could be the trigger to produce enough votes to overthrow some unions, Orazem said.
If that's the case, white-collar unions and public-employee unions are running the biggest risk by backing fair share, because they typically have weaker membership than blue-collar unions.
Wouldn't it be ironic if "fair share" turned out to be the biggest union-busting tool since right-to-work?
In that case, labor might even be able to get some Republicans to vote for it.
Business Editor David Elbert can be reached at (515) 284-8533 or delbert@dmreg.com