Then and Now

National Review published an article by a one Lafayette A. Hooser, which features the following paragraph:

The Right-to-Work law is a protection against laborism — the blind concentration of dictatorial power in the hands of a few irresponsible and self-perpetuating union bosses. Not many people in the labor movement want laborism, but they are getting it rammed down their throats anyway — as attested by the thousands and thousands of scribbled notes received by the McClellan Committee, notes from union members all over the country asking for protection from the union bosses. They are getting what they don’t want, because they are apathetic and afraid. They will not guard their freedoms. Every man, woman and child in America has a stake in the principle of free choice, in the towering importance of man’s right to get and hold a job without being forced into unwanted association and coerced payment of funds over which he has no control.

Well said, relevant to say the least, and very much the reason why I support Right-to-Work legislation (especially here in Indiana), but the most interesting about the article isn't what Mr. Hooser wrote, but rather when he wrote it.  This article appeared in the June 17th issue of National Review...in 1961.

It's amazing to think fifty years ago, the issue of people wanting to work without having to join a union was alive and just as serious; it certainly shows just what the union fat cats (just as today) were trying to do then: hold onto their power any way they could.

Of great importance, however, is since the publishing of the article, union membership (the key to the unions' power) has decreased over the decades, to the point the union fat cats of today fear the potential of the Right-to-Work legislation like Dracula would fear the potential of a wooden stake through his heart (and also why they support Card Check legislation, which has the potential of resurrecting the power previously enjoyed).

The unions were supposed to be looking out for the working man against the fat cat employers, but as Mr. Hooser's article clearly showed fifty years ago, the union leaders were already becoming the very fat cats they claimed then (and still claim now) to be fighting.  I think it's time to put the unions back in their place.