Major media outlets fail to explain what right-to-work laws do

Sean Higgins of the Washington Examiner:

My column in today’s paper is about how critics of right-to-work laws almost never bother to explain exactly what the laws do. That’s because a clear explanation tends to undermine the critics’ cases, revealing that they are essentially arguing for the right of Big Labor to force people to support unions financially even if they don’t want to join one.

I was curious therefore to see how most media outlets would describe right-to-work in their stories about Michigan becoming the 24th state to adopt such a law. Conservatives may be surprised, but the New York Times had it exactly right:

But advocates of the legislation, which outlaws requirements that workers pay fees to unions as a condition of employment, lauded the day as a historic turning point for economic health in Michigan, and some Republicans predicted that their victory here would embolden other states to enact similar measures.

It was one of the few I saw that bothered to explain the coercive nature of “closed shop†rules and how that impinged on workers’ rights. Most other news outlets failed to do that. They generally gave readers the impression the law allowed workers to renege on paying money they had promised to the unions.