Seems to me there is a lot of overlap between proponents of “right to work” and opponents of smoking bans. I’m not exactly sure how you reconcile those two positions. Both, are impairments of an employer’s right to contract and right to impose conditions of employment on prospective employees.
“Right to work” isn’t a law that allows an employer to have a union free workplace. That’s already legal. It also isn’t a law that allows an employer to have union workers at a business that also has non-union workers. That’s legal as well. What it does is make it illegal for an employer to contract with a union to impose union membership as a condition of employment on other employees.
Smoking bans, obviously, prohibit a business owner from allowing patrons to smoke in their establishment. But, they are often sold as an employee safety issue — you can’t make employees work in a smoke-filled environment as a condition of employment. “Go work somewhere else,” is often the response of smoking ban opponents.
So, it’s interesting to see folks who would say “go work somewhere else” when it’s a smoke filled environment somehow don’t say “go work somewhere else” when it’s a union filled environment.
Unions: more dangerous than cancer!
I don’t get your point.
I’ve never seen a smoking ban sold on the basis that it is good for employees. It’s all about non-smokers not being subjected to smoke (which, living one mile from a state that has a smoke ban, I have to give them that one. You certainly don’t come home smelling like smoke when you go out in Chicago vs. any bar in Indiana)
A similar (that is: simplistic, and unfair) criticism is that liberals should be for the Right to Work bill because liberals are pro-choice.