Collective Bargaining “Rights”
“Don’t let Walker take away our rights.” That claim is repeatedly heard in Wisconsin as public-union workers try to recall Republican state Senators who voted for Governor Scott Walker’s plan to require the workers to contribute more to their retirement and healthcare costs and limit their ability to use “collective bargaining” to increase pay and benefits.
Union workers claim that they are losing their “collective bargaining rights.” But are union workers really losing rights? It depends upon one’s definition of rights.
Tom Clementi, who defended the union line as a community columnist for the Appleton, Wisconsin, Post-Crescent, said that collective bargaining is a right because “federal and state law says so.” In other words, rights are what the government allows one to do. If one is guided by that definition, then collective bargaining would be a right, but following that line of reasoning, Aryan Germans had a “right” to persecute Jews in the 1930s and ’40s because government approved it. I doubt if most Americans — including Clementi — would be comfortable with that.
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