MADISON VOICES: The business case against "Right-to-Work"

Carousel BayrdSteve Lyons could be called a supporter of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.  He speaks positively of Walker and Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Rep. Robin Vos, and he believes they and their colleagues at the state capitol legislate with the best interest of Wisconsin and its residents in mind.

That’s why Lyons, government affairs/public relations and crisis communications advisor at the law firm of Whyte Hirshboeck Dudek, was hopeful when we spoke in January that Right to Work legislation would not be proposed in Wisconsin.

“The Governor has called it ‘a distraction,’ the speaker of the assembly, another Republican, has called it ‘a distraction,” because we’re really trying to fix something that isn’t broken,” Lyons said. “So right now, the reason why so many of these private business coalition members joined our coalition is because it’s not an adversarial relationship between the union and the administration.”

LISTEN: Steve Lyons talks to WORT’s Carousel Bayrd on the business case against “Right to Work” legislation.

 Lyons’ hope, we now know, was misplaced.  The Senate passed the legislation on Feb. 26 and the Legislature is due to vote on it this week.

Nevertheless, in anticipation of Right to Work legislation being proposed, Lyons became the lead spokesperson for Wisconsin Contractor Coalition, the coalition he refers to above.  The Wisconsin Contractor Coalition is a bipartisan group of more than 300 private businesses in Wisconsin that support private-sector unions.  It formed at the end of 2014 solely to voice private business opposition to Right to Work legislation.

Lyons explained why so many private businesses in Wisconsin rely on private unions.

“A company for example will say, ‘We need 20 welders.’ They’ll work with their local contractor to find those 20 welders,” said Lyons. “And the union will do the drug testing, will take care of the certifications, the training at their state-of-the-art facilities, to make sure that company gets the best employees that they can get to finish the job. The unions provide these state-of-the-art facilities for training and for educational purposes, and they work with the companies. So when these companies get these employees, they know they have folks that really know what they’re doing.”

Losing those union benefits—of training and certifying qualified workers—will result in those needs, and costs, being passed down to the taxpayers, argues Lyon. 

“If you take away the union structure, people will chose whether they can be in the union or not.  What will happen is, if they choose not to be in the union, part of the union dues pay for these facilities,” he said. “Who’s going to pay for these state-of-the-art facilities?  What will happen is I think a number of these state-of-the-art training facilities will go away, and those folks will have to get trained at a tech college.  And who pays for the tech colleges? The taxpayers.”

Nationally, explains Lyons, statistics show that workers in Right to Work states make less money, have less health insurance and fewer health insurance options, and smaller pensions.

“So what happens is they go elsewhere,” he said. 

Wisconsin cannot afford any resulting decrease in the size of the workforce.  

“We don’t have a jobs problem in Wisconsin, we have a workforce problem in Wisconsin.  We have 70,000 jobs that need to be filled. Many of those could be done by skilled labor,” Lyons said. “But why would someone who is looking for a job, either in Wisconsin who’s looking to stay in Wisconsin or someone from another state, want to move into a state where you’re going to be told, ‘Oh by the way you’re going to make less money, you’re going to have less health benefits, you’re going to have less pension.’ The economics don’t add up.”

--Carousel Bayrd is Vice Chair of the Dane County Board and hosts "A Public Affair" Tuesdays at noon on WORT (89.9 FM). She lives in Madison with her husband and two children.