Coal Country Just Says "No"

You can push people only so far, and then they may start examining deeply held assumptions about who's on the side of the angels after all.  The 7th most senior member of the House is polling badly against a Republican challenger in West Virginia.

There's the usual attempt to blame shadowy billionaires from New York.  Those Koch brothers are behind everything.  My own sister sends me emails complaining about them.  She thinks they're behind an initiative to destroy the union she works for--by eliminating the union's right to collect dues from people who'd rather not join.  It's a subject I've learned not to discuss with her, beyond reassuring her that the Pennsylvania initiative she's worried about doesn't appear to be getting any traction.  Let people make a free decision whether to join a union?  That's crazy talk.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

You could remind her that Texas goes further, and has a right-to-work law, so that people don't have to join a union at all. There are still unions in Texas, located at the companies that deserve them.

Valerie

Texan99 said...

She knows we do (she grew up here), she just thinks we've been completely taken over by the evil Koch brothers. Pennsylvania strikes her as more enlightened.

Eric Blair said...

Meh. The PA proposal is to enable businesses not to collect dues on behalf of unions. Yeah, that's not going anywhere.