Tennessee Poverty, PART TWO: Uncomfortable Truths about "RIGHT TO WORK"
We have all seen the stats; they are inarguable. RTW states like Tennessee perform worse on almost every metric you can think of. Educational attainment, health, wealth, income, percentage insured, infant mortality, bankruptcy, all of these have been adversely impacted by the workers of Tennessee having a limited right to organize and demand better wages and conditions. Some will point to the number of very large businesses moving in, with the expectation that somehow these juggernauts will manage to raise the conditions of life for all Tennesseans, when it is pretty apparent that what has attracted them is definitely not the quality of life here---that's been rated the worst in the nation by CNBC---but the ready availability of workers who will accept any treatment for the privilege of being able to survive.
I will dig into the stats hard in my next article. In this one, I wish to talk about the birth of RTW---how it came to be.
Tennessee became RTW in 1947. This was the same year that Taft-Hartley was passed, and six other states quickly followed suit. The ground had been well-fertilized for RTW, though, with the bullshit that we call racism today. Vance Muse, a name you may not know, played a large role in the popularization of RTW legislation. Muse was an oil lobbyist. In the years between 1910 and 1940, he fought hard against women’s suffrage, the 8 hour workday, and the prohibition on child labor. He despised FDR’s New Deal. In 1936, he co-founded the Christian American Association, using money from oil executives and industrial donors to get it off the ground.
The CAA took as its primary goal the abolition of the unions. Barring that, they would be satisfied with anti-strike laws and “Right to Work” legislation that forced unions to represent non-members and put them to work. How did they sell this idea? It was too easy, really. Vance Muse told people that white people and black people would be considered equals in a union. He raised the image of white and black people sitting together at a negotiating table.
The hard truth of the matter is that RTW was a shield against the bogeyman of equality. And those who imposed its anti-worker poison upon the South doomed the later generations to poverty and all the ills listed above. Today, 41% of Tennesseans are living either precariously or in absolute poverty. We can thank the racists.