As a labor oriented lawyer my interest was pricked last week when I received a piece of political literature from Senator Jesse Helms, promoting a "National Right to Work" law. This right to work issue harkens back to the 1950's, when employees in industrialized states, such as Ohio, fought hard for the "closed shop", where the unions could require, by contract, that all the employees of a particular workforce join the union or at least pay dues. This "power" was essential to create union strength in the face of the inherent power and coercive strength of the employer.

Because we have long accepted the "closed" shop or "union security" concept, one might dismiss the effort of Senator Helms to undo it as a cranky effort to turn back the hands of time. But that would be a mistake. Too often over the past decade reactionary ideas have caught hold and done much damage to the underlying security of the American Worker, precisely because we underestimated the greed and the ambition of those promoting such "reforms". Witness what has been done to dilute your right to redress injury through civil lawsuit, in the name of "Tort Reform" legislation which was promulgated and pushed by the insurance industry. Likewise, consider "Workers Compensation Reform" in this state, which over the past decade has been passed in at least three waves of separate bills, each taking more and more rights from the worker and combining in the end to dramatically reduce benefits available to Ohio's injured workers.

No, it would be a mistake to underestimate Senator Helms and others promoting a right to work bill. So with this rather long preamble, and as a rebuttal to any assertion you may hear that attacks the Union movement, I ask you to consider the following.

Times are good, or so we are told. By any number of traditional indicators our economy is producing wealth at a record breaking pace. Yet not all participate in this growth.

While CEO's are experiencing phenomenal increases in their annual compensation... some earning as much as ten or twelve million a year, and a few others even more... tens of thousands of workers are laid off. The growth in wage rates for the jobs that do remain is stagnant at best, and many times is actually decreasing in the last twenty years.

It was not always this way in America. We use to grow together. After WWII, until the 1980's, all sectors of the population shared in the expanding economy on a roughly equal footing. But between the years 1979 to 1993 the income of the top fifth of our families grew by 18%, while that of the bottom fifth dropped by 17% .

One factor that is surely related to the drop in real income for the average American has been the loss of strength in the American Labor Movement. In the last twenty five years the percentage of the workforce that is unionized has dropped 10%. In that same time the average weekly earnings of our people have dropped from roughly $450 to $350.

All this has a downward pressure on the quality of life for many Americans. Studies show that on average we are working one full month longer per year than we did twenty years ago, just to try and keep even. Yet we are losing our foothold, and today each family in America is in debt, on average, to the tune of $45,000. Many are just one or two paychecks away from financial disaster.

So the next time you hear Jesse Helms or someone else promoting a "Right to Work" law, keep in mind that such a law would be a violent attack on the ability of unions as institutions to exist. And in that sense, rather than promoting your right to work, such a law would be promoting your employer's rights to further dilute your wage scale, job security, and personal dignity.

Just a thought, from Robert E. Sweeney, founder of the law firm of Robert E. Sweeney Co., L.P.A.