Michigan Congress Approves Right-to-Work Legislation

Michigan will become the 24th state to enact right-to-work legislation. It's a controversial move and one which will be fought tooth and nail by unions and their allies in the Democratic Party. See Michigan Approves Curbs on Unions.

But let's review an editorial appearing today that spells out the issues clearly and succinctly. Worker Liberation in Michigan is worth taking the time to read in its entirety:

"The economic policy drift in Washington is antigrowth, but here and there in the states are glimmers of hope and change. The best news of late is in Michigan, which is poised this week to pass a landmark right-to-work law.

(The Big Labor opposition will employ a) familiar union political strategy: Cause as big a ruckus as possible in hopes of making right to work seem radical when it's already the law in nearly half the country.

We hope Republicans and Governor Rick Snyder aren't intimidated, because they have the moral and policy high ground. Union activists want voters to believe that right-to-work laws deny union organizing rights, or ban collective bargaining. President Obama peddled this distortion on Monday in Redford, Michigan, claiming that "what we shouldn't be doing is trying to take away your rights to bargain for better wages and working conditions."

Right to work does no such thing. It empowers individual workers. As allowed under the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, right to work merely lets individual workers choose for themselves if they want to join a union. The laws prevent closed union shops, which coerce individual workers to join unions and to pay union dues. A teacher who opts out under right to work, for example, could save several hundred dollars in annual union dues that go to political causes he may not even believe in.

Unions loathe right to work because they know that many workers would rather not join a union. Americans have seen what happened to the auto and steel industries, the Post Office and so many others. Unions can extract monopoly wages and benefits for a time from a profitable industry, but often at the cost of making that industry less competitive and eventually at the cost of union jobs. Thus did Teamster work rules—cake and bread had to be delivered in separate trucks—cost the bakery workers their jobs at Hostess. Right to work gives workers a choice.

 

Demonstrators protest right-to-work legislation outside the George W. Romney State Office building, where Gov. Snyder's office is located, in Lansing.

The Michigan law is a particular breakthrough because it comes in what used to be America's industrial heartland and in a state where 17.5% of workers are still unionized. Nationwide, the share is 11.8%, though only 6.9% in the private economy. . . .

Michigan would become the 24th right-to-work state and it could be the best thing to happen to its economy since the internal combustion engine. Michigan still has the nation's sixth highest state jobless rate at 9.1%, and it had one of the lowest rates of personal income growth between 1977 and 2011. A flood of economic evidence shows that right-to-work states have done better at attracting investment and jobs than have more heavily unionized states.

According to the West Michigan Policy Forum, of the 10 states with the highest rate of personal income growth, eight have right-to-work laws. Those numbers are driving a net migration from forced union states: Between 2000 and 2010, five million people moved to right-to-work states from compulsory union states.

Other policies (such as no income tax) play a role in such migration, so economist Richard Vedder tried to sort out the variables. In the 2010 Cato Journal, he wrote that "without exception" he found "a statistically significant positive relationship" between right to work and net migration.

Mr. Vedder also found a 23% higher rate of per capita income growth in right-to-work states. An analysis by the Taxpayers Protection Alliance finds that Michigan is now the 35th state in overall prosperity measured by per capita income. Had Michigan adopted a right-to-work law in 1977, the group estimates, per capita income for a family of four would have been $13,556 higher by 2008.

As impressive as all of this evidence is, the best case for right to work is moral: the right of an individual to choose. Union chiefs want to coerce workers to join and pay dues that they then funnel to politicians who protect union power. Right to work breaks this cycle of government-aided monopoly union power for the larger economic good."

Summing Up

Right-to-Work should be the law of the land. With Michigan signing on, it will be the law of 24 states.

President Obama and the union leadership are wrong.

Personal choice is an essential American liberty.

There is a huge difference between being pro-worker and anti-union.

And right-to-work will help to make our employers, including the public sector segment, much more productive and marketplace competitive.

So let's allow employees to decide for themselves whether to join and pay dues to a union. 

That personal freedom of choice is one of our most fundamental American liberties.

Thanks. Bob.