Aaron Ford: Getting rid of the right to work

The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that the leading Democrat candidate for governor, Aaron Ford, wants to abolish Nevada’s right-to-work law. “I’m getting rid of it,” proclaimed Ford.

Under Nevada’s right-to-work (RTW) law, employees cannot be denied a job because they are in a union, and neither can they be rejected from employment because they don’t join and pay union dues. Since 1953, Nevada workers have been free to decide for themselves whether or not they join a union.

Candidate Ford would change this and install a “pay to play” — or more accurately — a “pay to work” system for Nevada workers: No union dues, no job.

The Nevada Legislature has rejected repeal of the RTW at least 10 times over the years. Voters have voted down initiatives to institute forced payment by workers of union dues several times. According to the Nevada Legislative Counsel Bureau’s 2016 Policy and Program report, in 1994, those seeking to overturn employees’ right to work couldn’t get enough signatures on petitions to place rejection of RTW on the ballot.

Given the unwavering and overwhelming support for RTW among the people, voters, and even the legislators of Nevada for more than 70 years, one wonders why a candidate for governor would promote such an unpopular policy change? Aaron Ford’s promise of rejection of RTW doesn’t look much like a winning campaign strategy.

There may be several answers to the question of why a candidate would embrace such an unpopular political plank. One answer might be found in the fact that California doesn’t have RTW.

Aaron Ford consistently champions the policies of California and California Governor Gavin Newsom. Candidate Ford may see abandonment of Nevada workers’ right to work as a means for Nevada to more closely copy and cozy up to California politics and to achieve his apparent personal goal of more perfectly mirroring Newsom.

Ford may have other motivations for his support of “pay to work.” RTW is also absent in places like New York and Illinois, states where people, companies and business are fleeing in droves to places where workers have the right to work, like Texas and Florida. Maybe Aaron Ford is of the opinion that Nevada has too many people, jobs, companies, and businesses, and he knows that rejecting RTW will result in a mass exodus of business and residents from Nevada and prevent any new job seekers, opportunities and economic diversification?

The most likely — or at least the most important — reason for Ford’s rejection of right-to-work is undoubtedly money. He wants campaign cash from Big Labor to continue to flow into his campaign coffers. Candidates need cash; unions dole it out. Ford is obviously willing to take an unpopular anti-worker stance to keep union cash coming.

Ford’s reported reason for canning RTW is for the benefit of workers. This is, of course, absurd. Rejecting RTW does nothing to benefit workers.

Think of it this way: suppose there was a law that required you to join and pay dues to AARP in order to retire.

Under RTW, a worker can choose to join a union or not. Likewise, retirees can choose to join AARP or not. The current status for retirees could be called the Right To Retire. What if the law required you to pay dues to AARP or else you couldn’t retire? Would that benefit retirees?

Arguably, forcing payment of union dues to get a job is even worse than requiring payment of AARP dues to be allowed to retire.

At least with AARP you get a discount at Denny’s.

Philip S. Bovee is an attorney and writer who has lived in Pahrump since 2023.