Forcing workers to join unions is not the American way — and certainly not the SC way
America is experiencing record unemployment, robust economic growth and historically strong wage increases thanks to the pro-growth policies of President Donald Trump. These trends are the same in South Carolina, and we should be proud of that.
Given these encouraging trends, the last thing we should do is introduce expansive and disruptive new laws that would undermine our nationwide economic prosperity. Unfortunately, however, the Democrats in Congress have other ideas.
Recently the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, which is one of the most radical revisions to America workforce laws in our history. The bill would repeal South Carolina’s right-to-work law, give unions more access to private employee information, resurrect long-prohibited abusive union practices — like secondary boycotts — and eliminate the fundamental right to a secret ballot election.
Any one of these issues should give a reasonable voter pause, but the Democratic House majority just agreed to all of them. Why? Because the union bosses demanded that they do so.
Rather than celebrate our strong economy, the House Democrats chose to do the bidding of organized labor, which is run by union backers who employed tactics ranging from twisting arms to promising campaign support to win approval for Protecting the Right to Organize Act. That should alarm everyone, and it highlights the fact that the Protecting the Right to Organize Act is not designed to help our businesses, our economy or our workers in South Carolina and across the country.
Instead of legislation forcing unionization throughout the public and private sectors, Congress should consider a bill that protects the American worker. The National Right-to-Work Act — which has been introduced by U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson, my good friend, mentor and fellow member of the South Carolina congressional delegation — is a one-page bill that would protect American workers by preventing union officials from collecting fees from non-union workers as a condition of employment. Currently, employers in states where right-to-work is not law can still make workers pay union fees (even if they are not union members).
Rep. Wilson’s bill takes a common-sense approach to protecting American workers, and I am proud to be a co-sponsor of his proposal.
Unfortunately, the Democratic presidential candidates have expressed support for the Protecting the Right to Organize Act. That’s why I encourage voters to make the Democratic candidates publicly address this issue.; every voter deserves to know whether these candidates want to repeal right-to-work laws in order to create havoc for small businesses and on employee privacy.
We must continue to educate voters about the potential risks that the Protecting the Right to Organize Act contains for South Carolina’s economy — and for our nation’s economy,
Our prosperity depends on it.
U.S. Rep. William Timmons is a Greenville Republican who represents the 4th Congressional District.
This story was originally published March 5, 2020 at 1:11 PM.