The "okay-to-leech" laws [View all]

[TexasTowelie]

It is long past time for the labor movement to stop using the pejorative language of its opponents. Labor must forswear using "right to work." Labor does not call workers who cross picket lines and break strikes "replacement workers"--those workers who aid and abet the exploitation of other workers are called "scabs," because they are scabs, not "replacement workers."

Those who set themselves against the right to choose abortion have the wherewithal not to call themselves "anti-choice." They use their language, their words, to express their viewpoint. Or, to restate this point in the reverse, those who are pro-choice do not refer to themselves in the language of their opponents; that is to say, they do not refer to themselves as "anti-life."

Labor and its allies, however, use "right to work." They bemoan, for instance, that Michigan has become a "right to work" state. By so doing, they are using the language of capital, of the Chambers of Commerce, of the abusers and exploiters of workers.

There is no such thing as "right to work." It is the right to freeload. The right to get something for nothing. To benefit without paying. To be enriched by a harvest that one has neither sown nor reaped. It is akin to calling shoplifting the "right to shop"; of calling being a stowaway, the "right to travel."

Read more: http://socialistworker.org/2015/03/11/the-okay-to-leech-laws

Cross-posted in the Labor Movement Group.