Reversing 'Right to Work'

In 2003 trade unions in Idaho launched a campaign to repeal the state's 1980s-era Right To Work law, which had hobbled organized labor by banning mandatory dues-collection in union workplaces. The petition drive gathered enough signatures to place an initiative before voters, but during the certification process county clerks disallowed thousands of them, so the measure didn't make it onto the 2004 ballot. While the campaign was under way, though, drivers heading west on I-90 toward better-paying jobs across the state line in Spokane would come across a billboard that read, IF RIGHT TO WORK IS SO GOOD, WHY ARE YOU WORKING IN WASHINGTON?

Two years on, the I-90 billboard hosts an ad for Hooters, but the unions are trying again. And as in 2004, this time around the signature-gathering effort, a grassroots, bare-bones affair, is once more coming down to the wire.

Late last August the northern Idaho town of Coeur d'Alene hosted the annual county fair, one of the high points of which is the demolition derby. On the side of an old black Mercury were painted the words SMASH RIGHT TO WORK. The car's entrance number was 86 (1986 was the year Idaho's citizenry passed the Right To Work initiative, which, wags point out, resulted in citizens being allowed the "right to work for less"), and it was driven by the friend of a recently killed son of Brad Cederblom, a large, bearded, ironworkers' union organizer. The words had been added to the car during a paint-party in front of the house of Barbara Harris, a retired electrical worker and president of the Northern Idaho Central Labor Council. They would serve, anti-Right To Workers hoped, as a low-cost magnet that would draw registered voters to sign the Repeal Right To Work petition. That summer day, in front of thousands of fans, many of them workers for local resource-sector companies, the Mercury came in second, stopping only when its back had been crumpled into the rear tires and its hood had been upended like the rocks on an earthquake's fault line.

Subscriber Login

User Name

Password

Subscribe Now!

The only way to read this article and the full contents of each week's issue of The Nation online is by subscribing to the magazine. Subscribe now and read this article -- and every article published since for the past five years -- right now.

There's no obligation -- try The Nation for four weeks free.

• Get The Nation at home (and online!) for 68 cents a week!
• If you like this article, consider making a donation to The Nation.
• Reprint this article. Click here for rights and information.