Michigan’s New 'Corporate
Servitude Law' Takes Away Worker Rights
by
George Lakoff
Michigan has just passed a
corporate servitude law. It is designed to take away many of the worker rights
that unions have conferred throughout their history: The right to a living
wage. The right to equal pay for women. The right to deferred payments in the
form of pensions. The right to negotiate workplace standards and working
conditions. The right to overtime pay.
From
this conservative perspective, businessmen should have the liberty to run their
businesses as they please to maximize their profit, and workers should rely on
only their personal responsibility to get and keep a job. Unions, for
conservatives, thus violate (1) the liberty of business owners to offer workers
what is most profitable for the business, (2) the personal responsibility of
workers, and (3) the liberty conservatives think workers should have to work
without paying union dues.
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