howard here. howard, we were making your blood boil when we were talking about the union story. really? help us out here. there has to be a middle ground because if there s not, it s bad news for unions because, obviously, right-to-work is spreading even across michigan. so if i say to you your union shouldn t have a right to compel me to write a check, it s about my freedom to choose, you could then say to me, yeah, but you know what? i m negotiating with management. and you re going to get a free ride off of all the hard work and sweat. right. what is the middle ground there? there isn t a middle ground. i think for me right-to-work isn t to be anti-union. i actually think that hurt obama excuse me, that hurt romney in ohio. all the supposed the white, blue-collar workers who weren t going to support obama. a lot of them in ohio did support him. they did exactly this and then it was reversed on the ballot by a public vote a year later.
people didn t forget that. here s the problem. the problem is the free rider problem. in all right-to-work states, if you and i are both working for the same employer and i m getting a pretty good wage because it s a union job right. and you re not paying any dues, you get the same benefits everybody else does. that s not fair. is there a way to have two different pay scales, a union and a nonunion pay scales? practically there isn t. because i said it was un-american for a union to compel me to pay union dues if i didn t want to. i think it s also un-american for me to freeload off of you if you re a union leader who s paying dues every month. i shouldn t gain that benefit from you. can you have two different pay scales, a union pay scale and a nonunion pay scale? in theory you could but it would totally demoralize and disrupt the work force. how would you like to do the same job as somebody next door. if i made that choice to not join a union, that was my choice