The “okay-to-leech” laws

IT IS long past time for the labor movement to stop using the pejorative language of its opponents. Labor must forswear using "right-to-work." Labor does not call workers who cross picket lines and break strikes "replacement workers"--those workers who aid and abet the exploitation of other workers are called "scabs," because they are scabs, not "replacement workers."

Those who set themselves against the right to choose abortion have the wherewithal not to call themselves "anti-choice." They use their language, their words, to express their viewpoint. Or, to restate this point in the reverse, those who are pro-choice do not refer to themselves in the language of their opponents; that is to say, they do not refer to themselves as "anti-life."

Labor and its allies, however, use "right to work." They bemoan, for instance, that Michigan has become a "right to work" state. By so doing, they are using the language of capital, of the Chambers of Commerce, of the abusers and exploiters of workers.

There is no such thing as "right to work." It is the right to freeload. The right to get something for nothing. To benefit without paying. To be enriched by a harvest that one has neither sown nor reaped. It is akin to calling shoplifting the "right to shop"; of calling being a stowaway, the "right to travel."

Jack London gave the labor movement the term "scab." He provided labor a term that captured the essence of the strikebreaker, the picket line crosser and the company man. In "scab," labor has a term that expresses all that is reprehensive, all that is repulsive, of the worker who allies with capital against workers.

Labor needs a term that replicates for "right to work" what "scab" does for replacement workers. "Anti-union" does not meet the need. "Right to freeload" does not pack the punch of "scab." In the spirit of Jack, I suggest "leech." A leech sucks lifeblood out without giving anything in return. Actually, it weakens its host, making it vulnerable to attack and susceptible to disease. What leeches do to their hosts is what freeloading workers do to the unions that got them their wages, benefits and job security.

A "right to work" state is an "okay to leech" state. A worker who takes advantage of "okay to leech" laws is a "leech." No more should labor bemoan Michigan's adoption of "right to work" laws; it shall henceforth bemoan Michigan's joining the ranks of "okay to leech" states.
Graeme Moore, from the Internet