Right-To-Work Or Not
By
Gary Gerard, dumbhoosier.com
There is a huge debate going on down at the statehouse over right
now over “right-to-work” legislation.
Republicans, who have the majority in both houses of the Indiana
legislature – 60-40 in the House and 37-13 in the Senate – want
RTW to pass.
Democrats are dead set against it. But because of their minority
status, they really can’t stop it from passing unless they just
don’t show up, which is precisely what they’ve done so far. They
failed to show up three days this week, denying the legislature a
quorum and delaying the opening of the session.
During the last session, Demos left the state to avoid
voting on what they called anti-union legislation. After last
year’s flight from the state, the legislature passed laws to fine
lawmakers $1,000 a day for ducking out of their legislative
obligations.
The RTW bill passed out of the Senate labor committee Friday
afternoon and now goes to the full Senate. It looks as if the
Democrats will show up for work Monday and there will be no fines.
We’ll see.
Currently, there are 22 RTW states. (Opponents call them
right-to-work-for-less states or right-to-fire states.)
Basically RTW laws prohibit agreements between labor unions and
employers that make joining a union or paying dues mandatory –
either as a condition of employment or anytime after an employee
is hired.
Frankly, I see merit on both sides of the argument.
It doesn’t seem fair to force somebody to do join something they
may or may not want to join or pay something they may or may not
want to pay as a condition of employment.
It also doesn’t seem fair to have all employees of a given company
reaping the benefits of a union contract while only some of the
employees fund the union.
Certainly unions have been a big help to the average American
worker. Today’s workers enjoy things like overtime pay, paid
holidays, sick leave, pensions, safer workplaces and myriad other
benefits.
Today, via the federal agencies like the Occupational Safety and
Health Administration, the National Labor Relations Board and the
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, workers are far more
protected then they have ever been.
Lots of the laws and regulations those agencies administer were
championed by unions.
But I think unions have fallen victim to their own level of
effectiveness. There are so many regulations protecting workers
these days, workers don’t feel the need for a union.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2010, the percent
of wage and salary workers who were members of a union was 11.9
percent nationwide. That was down from 12.3 percent the year
before. Union membership peaked in 1954 at 28.3 percent.
(The union membership rate for public sector workers was 36.2
percent while only 6.9 percent for private workers.)
In Indiana, total union membership was 10.9 percent, up from 10.6
percent in 2009.
Most of the decrease may be because of the aforementioned federal
worker protection. But some also is due to problems with
corruption among union leadership and plain old-fashioned
overreach in union contracts.
I remember my lake neighbor – an autoworker from Kokomo – saying
he wished he’d get laid off. I asked if he could afford it. He
said, “Sure, I get 80 percent of my pay for 36 weeks.”
That just seems excessive to me. So the pendulum swings.
Manufacturers’ profits get pinched by union contracts and
something has got to give.
Currently, manufacturers who are looking to build new facilities
seem to be looking to RTW states where they perceive the climate
to be more business friendly.
Voila.
RTW legislation.
RTW states do seem to rank higher in pro-business climate
categories, but there are so many factors to consider,
lots of these studies are really kind of misleading.
For example, Texas (RTW) led the nation with 11 percent job
growth over the past decade. But so did Alaska (nonRTW.) Was
this because of the RTW issue? Nah, oil.
Take Oklahoma. Manufacturing jobs there peaked in 2000 the year
before, the state passed its RTW law. Manufacturing jobs have
declined there every year since, except for an uptick last year.
So did RTW cost Oklahoma a ton of jobs? Nah, downturns in sectors
related to housing and construction and general economic malaise.
According to a BLS payroll survey, RTW states gained 1.6 million
jobs over the past 10 years while union states lost 2 million.
But despite those surprising numbers, there’s no real evidence
that lower labor standards and wages brought about by RTW relate
directly to job growth.
That’s because there are so many factors affecting
employment numbers – things like availability of natural
resources, transportation, infrastructure, workforce
quality, location, standard of living, schools, tax rates, climate
and many more.
Of course, the converse of all of this also is true. There’s no
real evidence that RTW won’t bring in new jobs.
Those against RTW say it’s a political ploy and a power grab by
Republicans to bust unions since unions traditionally make
political contributions to Demos.
But there is no real evidence that RTW laws are union busters,
either. Some RTW states – Texas and Florida, for example – have
seen union membership percentages increase from 2009 to 2010 while
other nonRTW states have seen union percentages decline.
One labor researcher described the RTW debate this way: “It’s the
same as saying that states with names that start with the letters
‘n’ through ‘z’ grew faster over the past decade. That’s actually
true, but it’s not meaningful in policy terms.”
See, people on both sides can cherry-pick tons of statistics to
make their point. Trouble is, most of them are simply irrelevant
because of the complexity of the data.
The bottom line?
Indiana elected a majority of Republicans to make policy. They’re
making it. They believe this is the right course for Indiana.
Fine. Let’s give it a whirl.
Demos should swallow hard, show up for work and vote no. The bill
will almost certainly pass.
Then we’ll see if it attracts business like the Republicans say it
will.
And if it turns out to be the union-busting, wage-depressing,
worker-endangering overreach the Demos claim it is, the Demos can
campaign on it, win back the majority, and rescind it.
iation board meeting Tuesday. It should be interesting.
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