Conscience of a Conservative by Barry Goldwater Read Free Book Online

to collective bargaining; the bargaining is conducted with the employer of the workers concerned. Let us briefly treat with each of these conditions, noting the extent to which they are violated today, and the remedial action we are called upon to take.
    Freedom of Association. Here the argument is so plain that I wonder why elaboration is necessary. What could be more fundamental than the freedom to associate with other men, or not to associate, as each man's conscience and reason dictates? Yet compulsory unionism is the rule rather than the exception today in the ranks of organized labor. Millions of laboring men are required to join the union that is the recognized bargaining agent at the place they work. Union shop agreements deny to these laboring men the right to decide for themselves what union they will join, or indeed, whether they will join at all. The exercise of freedom for many of these citizens, means the loss of their jobs.
    Here is the kind of thing that can happen as the result of compulsory unionism. X, a family man in Pennsylvania had been a union member in good standing for over twenty years. When the United Electrical Workers became the recognized bargaining agent at his plant, he refused to join on the grounds the UEW was Communist dominated—a judgment that had been made by the CIO itself when it expelled the UEW in 1950. The result, since his employer had a union shop agreement with the UEW, was that X lost his job.
    The remedy here is to give freedom of association legal protection. And that is why I strongly favor enactment of State right-to-work laws which forbid contracts that make union membership a condition of employment. These laws are aimed at removing a great blight on the contemporary American scene, and I am at a loss to understand why so many people who so often profess concern for "civil rights" and "civil liberties" are vehemently opposed to them. Freedom of association is one of the natural rights of man. Clearly, therefore, it should also be a "civil" right. Right-to-work laws derive from the natural law: they are simply an attempt to give freedom of association the added protection of civil law.
    I am well aware of the "free loader" argument, so often advanced by union leaders in defense of compulsory unionism. The contention is that a man ought not to enjoy the benefits of an organization's activities unless he contributes his fair share of their cost. I am unaware, however, of any other organization or institution that seeks to enforce this theory by compulsion. The Red Cross benefits all of us, directly or indirectly, but no one suggests that Red Cross donations be compulsory. It is one thing to say that a man should contribute to an association that is purportedly acting in his interest; it is quite another thing to say that he must do so. I believe that a man ought to join a union if it is a good union that is serving the interests of its members. I believe, moreover, that most men will give support to a union provided it is deserving of that support. There will always be some men, of course, who will try to sponge off others; but let us not express our contempt for some men by denying freedom of choice to all men.
    The union leaders' further argument that right to work legislation is a "union-busting" device is simply not borne out by the facts. A recent survey disclosed that in all of the nineteen States which have enacted right-to-work laws, union membership increased after the right-to-work laws were passed. It is also well to remember that the union movement throughout the world has prospered when it has been put on a voluntary basis. Contrary to popular belief, compulsory unionism is not typical of the labor movement in the free world. It prevails in the United States and England, but in the other countries of Western Europe and in Australia, union membership is generally on a voluntary basis. Indeed the greatest percentage of unionized workers are found in countries that