USW Vice President Fred Redmond stopped by The Leslie Marshall Show last week to talk about the ongoing NAFTA renegotiations and the request from Canada that the United States roll back all “right-to-work” laws as part of the deal. The neighbors to the north are looking for both Mexico and the United States to improve their labor standards, including strengthening collective bargaining rights for workers, in order for all three countries to remain competitive.
“The United States entered into this renegotiation hoping to get assistance from Canada in order to bring up labor standards in Mexico, and we support that,” Redmond said. “But we think Canada has brought up a legitimate argument in saying that American labor law does not level the playing field for workers, particularly ‘right-to-work’ legislation.”
Click here for the entire interview.
In the United States, the unionization rate has declined to 10.7 percent, including both public and private sector workers. Redmond believes that the rate will shrink even farther if “right-to-work” legislation continues to pass and if Supreme Court cases like Janus V. AFSCME tip the wrong way.
Under current law, every union-represented public service worker may choose whether or not to join the union — but the union is required to negotiate on behalf of all workers whether they join or not. Those workers are still required, however, to pay a fair share fee in order for the union to represent them. Anti-labor lawyers and corporations disagree with this requirement and have pursued the case to reverse it.
“The intent is to weaken a union’s ability to generate the revenue it takes for us to negotiate contracts and to represent workplace democracy and other things that make life better for our workers,” Redmond said.
Click here for the entire interview.
Studies have shown that all workers’ wages decrease as unionization rates decrease. Redmond and the labor movement as a whole believe it is vital for unionization to be protected and that NAFTA renegotiations may be one way to do that.
“There is no mechanism in this country that has built the middle class more than collective bargaining,” he said. “We’ve been able to negotiate wages and benefits to ensure our members share some of the wealth that they help to create every day.”
Redmond also believes it’s important to have new language for labor standards in a new NAFTA in order to do things like raise workers’ wages in Mexico but that it must also be paired with actual penalties when countries fail to meet those standards. Otherwise, the U.S. economy will continue to suffer like it has over the past 23 years.
“U.S. companies have flocked south to the border, and, as a result, hundreds of thousands of American workers have lost their jobs,” he said. “Lack of a border adjustment tax leads to American manufacturers producing their products in Mexico for cheap labor, bringing them across the border, and selling them to U.S. consumers at top rates.”
To hear more about NAFTA and “right-to-work legislation,” click here for the entire interview.