Main Street

State Legislatures Considering Harmful Right-to-Work(-for-Less) Bills

States around the country, notably Missouri and Indiana, are considering detrimental proposals to become “right-to-work” states. This designation outlaws “union shops,” defined as businesses, schools, or organizations where employees are mandated to join a union and pay union dues after a certain amount of time. A better term is “right-to-work-for-less,” as this policy drives down wages, benefits, and worker safety.

Anti-union activists argue that right-to-work laws promote businesses and ease the burden of unemployment. State Senator Timothy Green fought back against this misconception in the Joplin Independent:

This is not accurate. In fact, the highest current unemployment in the country, Nevada, is 14.3%, and Nevada is what I call a “right-to-work-for-less state.” Furthermore, the state of Tennessee, through November of 2010, had an unemployment rate identical to Missouri, 9.4%. Of the 22 right-to-work states, several – including Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina and South Carolina – also have higher unemployment rates than Missouri…..

Claims that right-to-work-for-less states have added millions of private sector jobs are very misleading. Money talks and right-to-work-for-less states like Tennessee ($577 million in 2008 subsidies for one auto plant) and Mississippi ($300 million subsidy in 2007 for another plant) offered huge incentives. These property and sales tax exemptions, income tax credits, infrastructure aid, land discounts, and training grants – not right-to-work laws – played a primary role in those decisions.”

Besides the misleading claims about unemployment, right-to-work legislation makes life harder for the individual worker. Without supportive union membership, the union may not be in a strong position in any collective bargaining negotiations. This gives corporations and management the ability to lower wages and cut benefits.

Senator Green continues,

A study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, funded in part by the Ford Foundation, and on whose Board sits Dr. Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize winning economist, confirms that union employees have higher wages, and are more likely to have employer-provided healthcare and pensions than non-union states. Right-to-work-for-less will bring substantial increases in Medicaid costs to the taxpayer, if union membership declines in Missouri. While 58.5% of the employees of non-union employers have health insurance and 48.5% have employer provided pensions, 77.9% of unionized employees in Missouri have healthcare and 77.3% have pensions. A non-union employee is less likely to have employer provided healthcare than a union employee. Every time there’s an economic recession, a lot of people immediately blame the workers in organized labor. However, if you consider neighboring Illinois, or Minnesota or Wisconsin, they each have a higher standard of living and a better tax base for public schools, fire, police because they’re all unionized states.

Last, right to work legislation hurts everyone, even workers in industries without a union. As wages across the board are lowered, the tax base decreases and the state is unable to provide essential services.

Jim Kabell, secretary/treasurer for Teamsters Local 245 in Springfield, MO gave his opinion on Ozarks First:

Kabell believes such rules will hurt Missouri. He believes they could even lead to lasting social effects, from the results of those weaker negotiations.

“With lower wages the tax base is less,” he says. “So the ability to take care of schools and roads and police and fire and all the things that we expect as tax payers and citizens. So there’s a huge social impact to each state that’s a ‘right to work’ state.”