Contact
Right-to-work laws hurt all workers and the economy
Carter Bundy
The Rio Grande Foundation can try to cobble together all the complex statistical formulae in the world, but the reality is their vision of a workforce with no rights and no power almost always leads to lower wages and higher unemployment.
The Rio Grande Foundation’s “study” about the impact of so-called “right-to-work” laws is purely speculative and not based on real economics or real world experience. We can all try to manipulate numbers to prove what is or isn’t likely to happen with legislative changes, but one of the many beautiful things about the United States is that we have 50 real-world laboratories to prove what actually does happen when laws like right-to-work (RTW) are implemented.
The truth is that workers in RTW states make far less than workers in workplace fairness states. As of 2010, RTW state workers make an average of $5,538 a year less than workplace fairness states’ workers. Well, maybe it’s a fluke, right? Or maybe workplace fairness states had an historical advantage that is trending in favor of RTW states?
Nope. In 2001, the workplace fairness states’ workers made $5,333 more than RTW states’ workers. In other words, the gap in wages has actually increased in favor of workplace fairness states in the last decade.
As far as employment, according to recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 8 of the 12 highest unemployment states are RTW states. The Rio Grande Foundation can try to cobble together all the complex statistical formulae in the world, but the reality is their vision of a workforce with no rights and no power almost always leads to lower wages and higher unemployment. You have to really twist data around and look for obscure statistical anomalies to try to pretend giving all the power in a workplace to CEOs makes economic sense for workers and their families.
A poorer, sicker population
Workplace safety suffers even more under RTW laws. The rate of workplace deaths is 52.9 percent higher in RTW states. When it comes to health care, only 50.3 percent of employers in RTW states offer health insurance, compared to 56.7 percent in those with union rights. People in RTW states are 23.7 percent more likely to be uninsured, and their kids are 38.7 percent less likely to be insured.
And these aren’t just union workers we’re talking about. Non-unionized workers in workplace fairness states benefit enormously from a labor market that generally tends to pay more and offer benefits. Non-union employers in workplace fairness states end up treating workers better in terms of money, benefits and safety in workplace fairness states because they know they’ll lose good workers to other employers (including unionized employers) if they don’t.
There are all kinds of secondary issues that arise from having a poorer, sicker, less secure population in RTW states. Largely because they have poorer workforces, RTW states spend far less per pupil — $2,671 — than states with basic workplace fairness. It’s probably also not a surprise that poorer, sicker, less-educated RTW states have much higher infant mortality rates (16 percent higher) while suffering from higher poverty rates from adults and kids alike.
Nice if you’re in that 1 or 2 percent
Does RTW offer any advantages? Well, 28.3 percent of jobs in RTW states are classified as “low-wage occupations,” while only 19.5 percent are classified as low-wage in workplace fairness states. It’s easier to create third-world level pay and benefits, which some multi-national employers absolutely love. But it’s a disaster for workers, their kids, and for America’s middle class.
Here are two links to Economic Policy Institute papers dismantling RTW “data” used in Indiana and New Hampshire. While EPI hasn’t yet examined this Rio Grande Foundation paper, even the most basic statistical analysis above shows the folly of claiming RTW laws reduce wages and employment.
As a final note, federal labor law has protected the rights of individuals to not join a union or have money go towards efforts that are in conflict with their political or religious beliefs. The right to work movement has absolutely nothing to do with making the lives of American workers better, or protecting them in any way. To the contrary, all the real-world evidence for decades has shown that right to work is simply a way to transfer money out of the pockets of hard-working Americans and into the bank accounts of multi-millionaire and billionaire owners, which is precisely why a study like this comes from an organization funded by the very richest corporate interests in the country.
RTW is a law that reflects a vision of a society where the very rich continue to get richer and the middle class disappears into poverty and near-poverty. Nice if you’re in that 1 or 2 percent, but terrible for the rest of America.
Bundy is the political and legislative director for AFSCME in New Mexico. The opinions in his column are personal and do not necessarily reflect any official AFSCME position. You can learn more about him by clicking here. Contact him at carterbundy@yahoo.com.
10 comments so far. Scroll down to submit your own comment.
Leave a response
You must be logged in to post a comment.
There is strength in numbers. One person does not have much strength against a corporation. Right to work individuals ride on the backs of union members. Do we want to go back to child labor and over 40 hour work week? Unions have done good things. My dad, a union man in the steel mills in Gary, IN, said in the 1980′s that unions were demanding too much. Gues the pendulum continues to swing. As for the Rio Grande Foundation wish they would just dry up and blow away.
The follow-up comments illustrate how important it is to be consistent with an argument and not shift around using a bunch of meaningless data (or quibbling when the bigger point doesn’t change). We’ll have a little fun with the RGF at the end of this.
First, to Jim Spence’s observation that my data are “totally false”, well, Jim, I was using the most recently published data from the AFL-CIO, and it was true very recently that 8 of the top 12 states for high unemployment are RTW. Even if your data is more recent, and it’s only 6 of 12, well, first, there are 28 workplace fairness states and only 22 RTW states, so RTW states are still over-represented in the list of high unemployment states (27% of RTW states are among our worst for employment, compared to 21% of workplace fairness states). When RTW had 8 of the top 12 recently, that meant 36% of RTW states were among the worst, compared to 14% of workplace fairness. So not only have you solidified my point, you missed the biggest point: the RGF claims that RTW is a cure-all for employment and wages, when it’s clear that wages are consistently lower and employment is at best a wash, and in context, RTW states fare worse.
Second, there’s not even an attempt to refute that there are higher rates of poverty, lower rates of education, worse health coverage, and more dangerous workplaces in RTW states. Quality of life has to matter for something, and RTW clearly is strongly correlated with lower quality of life.
Third, yes, Paul, I like good statistical analyses as much as anyone, and am moderately proud of the RGF for actually trying to paper over their ideological position with “data”. But as the links to “data” from similar RTW sister organizations in Indiana and New Hampshire show, it’s pretty easy to cherry-pick and use deceptive and/or irrelevant facts to make a point, something that RTW advocates are forced to do almost everywhere because the real world experience shows RTW is a disaster for all but the very richest corporate owners.
Fourth, if the RGF’s study had the slightest bit of credibility, and there were in fact double-digit gains in wages and employment to be had with RTW, why hasn’t that happened over the last, say, 80 years of RTW states (which even before RTW laws were almost all anti-union states with far lower union density than workplace fairness states)? How, given the amazing, incredible (emphasis on “incredible”) conclusions of the RGF’s study of the magic of RTW, have RTW states not only consistently been at the bottom of wage, poverty, education, and health lists, but they’re actually continuing to lose ground on most of those fronts even today?
And finally, a bit of fun with the RGF, hoisting them on their own petard. One of their most popular data sets they’ve used over the last few years to “prove” that public sector workers and unions are destroying with oversized government in New Mexico is the ratio public sector workers to private sector workers. At the time, I dismantled that argument by noting the meaningless of that statistic: 13 of the 15 “worst” states on that list voted Republican in the last presidential election, and 12 of the 15 “best” states (according to the RGF) voted Democratic. The RGF’s data “proved” that outside of New Mexico and Washington state, Republican, rural, conservative (mostly) southern and western states were for big government, while liberal, northeastern, urban states were for small government.
Now they’ve raised a similarly absurd set of data: According to the RGF, of the 15 “worst” big government states, 10 are right to work (Idaho, North Dakota, Wyoming, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina) while only 5 are workplace fairness (West Virginia, Montana, New Mexico, Washington, and Alaska).
In other words, the new RGF study once again confuses correlation with causation, and is completely at odds with their previous attacks on government and unions. I can’t wait for someone with even more statistical expertise to dismantle the methodology of the newest study in even more detail as has been done in state after state, and in RGF study after RGF study (see http://www.nmpolitics.net/index/2010/10/the-myth-of-bloated-government/ and http://www.nmpolitics.net/index/2011/01/apples-to-apples-public-workers-make-less/ and http://www.nmpolitics.net/index/2010/04/drop-the-political-rhetoric-join-the-real-debate/ Plus, their pension data was absolutely wrong in another study a few years ago, but the dismantling of that RGF effort isn’t linked on Heath’s columnists’ pages any longer. I’ll try to find it and re-link or re-post just to re-live another example of the RGF manipulating totally irrelevant or deceptive data for an ideological point.
Still love you, Paul (you too, Jim!), but sorry, the idea that RTW states are more prosperous or have better employment or are better than workplace fairness states in any significant quality of life measure simply isn’t true, and that data prove it. Facts ARE stubborn things
P.S. Americans have been moving from the originally-settled northeast to the south and west for as long as we’ve been a country, and it has nothing to do with RTW laws. The trend started accelerating to the south especially as air conditioning became widespread, something every person with basic familiarity with American history knows. In fact, Paul and Jim are at odds with each other here, because Jim accurately notes that housing prices, which are by the very definition of markets a reflection of desirability of a place, are higher in workplace fairness states than in RTW states.
If hurricanes are so bad, why do people keep moving to Florida?
If Right to Work is so bad, why do people keep moving to states that have these laws in place?
I’m convinced: making free bargaining by associations of workers illegal is no worse than hurricanes.
The Rio Grande Foundation “study” would be much more credible if Mr. Gessing would move himself and the RGF to one of the right to work states that he seems to be so enamored with.
Excellent pgessing, you have skewered the writer’s arguments quite well. But when the central logic of the article is a factual fallacy, that is the normal outcome.
If Right to Work is so bad, why do people keep moving to states that have these laws in place? Maybe the average person looking for a job has more knowledge of the situation than Carter and the Peanut Gallery in the comments section?
Over the last decade:
Congressional seats gained
Right-to-Work states total: 11
Non-Right-to-Work states total: 1
Congressional seats lost
Right-to-Work states total: 2
Non-Right-to-Work states total: 10
Mr. Gessing, in his fervent attempt to defend his organization’s “study”, accidentally demonstrated why – like most agenda-driven fabrications from the Rio Grande Foundation – Mr. Fruit’s study is so remarkably flawed; it is so “comprehensive” that when Mr. Fruit could find no actual data to demonstrate the conclusion he was being asked to produce, he just simply filled the gap with – in Mr. Gessing’s own words – assumptions. Furthermore, by not including income disparity or population-change figures in his model, he magically managed to find the exact result that he had already decided were true without the rather obvious counter-demonstration of why those results are entirely meaningless. It really was a fascinating read, and once again demonstrates exactly why the Rio Grande Foundation should be treated as no more credible than Glenn Beck.
The fact of the matter is that the RGF study is one of the most comprehensive studies every performed. It covers every state and spans 70 years. Many of the variables used in what is derisively called “complex statistical formulae” are the same variables that pro-union organizations such as Economic Policy Institute have included in their studies.It is somewhat surprising that AFSCME would so readily dismiss statistical techniques that its own researchers employ.If Carter and his friends in the labor movement are so confident in the results and desirous of having an open and transparent debate, why don’t they create their own study that spans covers every state and spans 70 years to challenge our assumptions and debunk ours?
Good collection of information. I hope you saw all the comments on Fruit’s article.
This column cites unemployment statistics that are totally false. The states with the highest unemployment rates are as follows according the U.S. Department of Labor website’s most recent figures: http://www.bls.gov/web/laus/laumstrk.htm/: Nevada 11.6, Rhode Island 10.9, California,10.7, New Jersey 9.6, South Carolina 9.4, North Carolina 9.4, Georgia 9, New York 8.9, Mississippi 8.8, Illinois 8.7, Florida 8.6, Michigan 8.6.
The ratio is not 8-4 as Bundy says. It is an exact 6-6 split between “right to work” and forced union states. You can obtain the list of right to work states at this website: http://www.nrtw.org/rtws.htm
What is particularly instructive is the list of the thirteen states with the LOWEST unemployment rates in the nation on the same Labor Department site. Of those thirteen, nine of the 22 states with right to work laws are on the list.
Citing higher wages is completely misleading. Wages won’t go far thanks to the complete lack of affordability of housing in forced union states like California, New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. Citing inflated wage numbers doesn’t make the cost of living any more bearable in those states. This explains why these states are steadily losing population (and congressional seats) to states that do not force unionization.
As for the Economic Policy Institute, it is an anti-business Washington D.C. based progressive propaganda machine. You can learn more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Policy_Institute
Facts are stubborn things.