What ‘right-to-work’ means for Indiana’s workers

[Ricter]

Quote from Wallet:

North to South? Guess they gotta go where they can find some jobs. All them heavy unionized states are dying on the vine

From the US Census:

Private nonfarm employment, percent change 2000-2009

Oklahoma 7.4%
USA Average 0.04%
Indiana -7.6%
Illinois -6.9
NY -0.03
NJ -3.0



Population, percent change, 2000 to 2010

Oklahoma 8.7
USA 9.7
Indiana 6.6%
Illinois 3.3
NY 2.1
NJ 4.5


Must be doing something right, no wonder Indiana wants to adopt RTW

Don't get excited, people are retiring and moving southwards, bringing their savings with them, which creates demand, which creates jobs. Couple that general tendency with the other very strong factor, the OK oil patch, and you get good growth. Again, nothing to do with RTW.

 

[Ricter]

Quote from Ricter:

Grow a brain, mate.

A says X about Z.
A lives in Z.
Therefore X is true?

Alright, that wasn't very polite. You could say the same to me if I made some claim about air speed, lift and such... I'm not trained in that field.

 

[Max E.]

correct.

Quote from Ricter:



A says X about Z.
A lives in Z.
Therefore X is true?

 

[AAAintheBeltway]

The argument against RTW makes about as much sense as big labor's other big dream, repealing the secret ballot in unionization elections.

In union shop states, you want a job with a unionized company, you have no choice but to join the union. That means you have to pay dues to union goons, just to hold your job. That strikes me as a model that is more mafia than American.

Plus, you have to strike if they call a strike, even if you think it might break the company and cause you to lose your job. Not your choice. Liberals are so big on "choice" in other matters, you'd think they would respect a wworkers choice about his job.

Not when big money is at stake. Unions bankroll democrats, and democrats depend on public sector unions in particular tostay in power. Hence the crazed opposition to some fairly minor measures in Wisconsin designed to address a huge problem, ie the fact that government leaders are in bed with unions and agree to burdensome contracts that someone has to pay for years later.

Anyone who can claim with a straight face that RTW is not a factor in where companies put plants is lying. Do you think it was just a coincidence that all the foreign auto plants are in RTW states or that Boeing built a plant in SC because they liked the beaches?

 

[Lucrum]

Quote from Ricter:

... I'm not trained in that field.

Socioeconomics?

 

[Lucrum]

Quote from AAAintheBeltway:

...In union shop states, you want a job with a unionized company, you have no choice but to join the union. That means you have to pay dues to union goons, just to hold your job. That strikes me as a model that is more mafia than American.

Plus, you have to strike if they call a strike, even if you think it might break the company and cause you to lose your job. Not your choice. Liberals are so big on "choice" in other matters, you'd think they would respect a workers choice about his job...

You hit that nail on the head.

 

[Ricter]

Quote from AAAintheBeltway:


Anyone who can claim with a straight face that RTW is not a factor in where companies put plants is lying.

"Surveys of actual manufacturers confirm that RTW is not a significant draw; last year, small manufacturers ranked it sixteenth among factors affecting location decisions. For higher-tech, higher-wage employers, nine of the ten most favored states are non-RTW, led by arch-liberal Massachusetts."

 

[AAAintheBeltway]

Quote from Ricter:

"Surveys of actual manufacturers confirm that RTW is not a significant draw; last year, small manufacturers ranked it sixteenth among factors affecting location decisions. For higher-tech, higher-wage employers, nine of the ten most favored states are non-RTW, led by arch-liberal Massachusetts."

Surveys are one thing, where they actually build plants is something else. BMW has a big plant in SC, the Japanese transplants are all in the south. It's not just because they like to play golf. And of course all tech manufacturing is done in asia. No NLRB there.

Anyway, why would a rational person want to live in a non-RTW state? Do you really want to have to pay tribute to some corrupt labor boss to hold a job? I sure don't.

 

[Arnie]

The 2 states that have consistently ranked the highest in business friendly environment over the past few years, Texas and Virginia, are RTW states.

An hour of labor is a commodity, just like anything else. If you price it higher than the market, you will lose out. I'm sure unions had a place in the past, but they have morphed into nothing more than a mafia-esque form of extortion....to their members and society as a whole.

And finally, Ricter, if the co's say RTW is at the bottom of the criteria, then why all the angst over this bill?

 

[Wallet]

Quote from Ricter:

"A pay cut

By Gordon Lafer | January 12, 2012
This commentary first appeared in The Nation

"For the past year, public employees around the country have been under attack. With collective bargaining cast as a fiscal issue, private sector workers are encouraged to vent their economic frustrations at lazy government clerks living high on the hog off others’ hard-earned tax dollars. “We can no longer live in a society,” Scott Walker, then governor-elect of Wisconsin, argued, “where the public employees are the haves and taxpayers who foot the bills are the have-nots.”

"But it turns out that the same forces that bankrolled the attack on public employees have also been advancing an agenda to eliminate unions for private sector workers.

"Twenty-two states—predominantly in the old Confederacy —already have “right to work” laws, mostly dating from the McCarthy era. “Right to work” (RTW) does not guarantee anyone a job. Rather, it makes it illegal for unions to require that each employee who benefits from the terms of a contract pay his or her share of the costs of administering it. By making it harder for workers’ organizations to sustain themselves financially, RTW aims to undermine unions’ bargaining strength and eventually render them extinct.

"With the Republican sweep of state legislatures in 2010, a coalition of corporate lobbies, right-wing ideologues and Republican operatives seized the moment to fulfill their long-sought goal of extending RTW into traditionally union-friendly parts of the country.

"In 2011, RTW was promoted in a dozen states, but adopted in none. As the new year gets underway, national attention has focused on Indiana as the best hope of anti-union lobbyists. Republicans have comfortable majorities in both houses of the Indiana legislature, and Governor Mitch Daniels is eager to sign a RTW bill. In March 2011, Democrats defeated RTW by fleeing the state—spending five weeks holed up in an Illinois hotel to prevent a legislative quorum. They returned only after Republicans promised that RTW would not be reintroduced in 2011.

"As soon as the calendar turned over, the fight began anew, with both the Republican leadership and the Chamber of Commerce declaring RTW a top priority. This time, Republicans have an added advantage. After the Democrats returned from Illinois, Republicans passed a law mandating fines of up to $1,000 a day for any legislator who skips town to prevent a quorum—and insisting that fines can only be paid by the legislators themselves. So far, the Democrats are bucking the pressure: On January 10, 2012, they walked out in protest once again. But with some representatives in danger of losing their homes, it’s unclear how long they will be able to hold out.

"We live in an Orwellian time, and it’s unsurprising that RTW is presented as a job creation strategy. In Indiana, the bill’s prime sponsor insists that “we need to become a right-to-work state to help out those workers who are unemployed.”

"Like most business initiatives that purport to help the little people, this one starts with cutting workers’ wages. RTW is supposed to be a tool for luring manufacturers from one state to another. As the Chamber of Commerce explains, “unionization increases labor costs,” and therefore “makes a given location a less attractive place to invest new capital.” By giving up unions and lowering their wages, workers increase their desirability in the eyes of manufacturers. This is the corporate lobbies’ idea of economic policy: have people in every state compete for the lowest wages and crappiest benefits. Some location will inevitably win out, but in the end, everyone’s wages will be lower and the number of jobs in the country will be the exact same as before. If you wonder how income inequality got so extreme, look no further.

"But even as a policy of immiseration-makes-growth, it doesn’t work. According to statistical studies (which I compiled in a paper for the Economic Policy Institute titled “Does Right to Work Create Jobs?”), the impact of RTW laws is to lower average income by about $1,500 a year and to decrease the odds of getting health insurance or pension through your job—for both union and non-union workers. But while RTW succeeds in cutting wages, it fails to boost job growth.

"To a large extent, globalization has rendered RTW impotent. It may be that companies in the 1970s or 1980s moved to RTW states in search of lower wages. But in the globalized economy, companies looking for cheap labor are overwhelmingly looking to China or Mexico, not South Carolina.

"In this sense, the most important case study for any state considering RTW in 2012 is that of Oklahoma, the only state to have newly adopted RTW in the post-NAFTA era.

"When Oklahoma was debating RTW in 2001, supporters made all the same claims now being voiced in Indiana. Oklahomans were told that RTW was the key to expanding their manufacturing base. Most importantly, a series of corporate location consultants reported that Oklahoma was being “redlined” because of its labor law.

“When companies start looking for a relocation site,” one consultant told legislators, “the second most important criteria they list is whether a state is a right-to-work state…. If the answer is ‘no,’ then they won’t even consider that state. This means that you are cut off from 90 percent of the relocating companies.” If Oklahoma adopted RTW, this consultant promised, the state would see “eight to 10 times as many prospects.”

"This rhetoric is now being repeated, almost word for word, in Indiana. Governor Daniels claims that without RTW, Indiana is driving away one-third of all potential new employers. Yet neither in Oklahoma nor in Indiana has there ever been any data presented to substantiate such claims. No list of companies who went elsewhere because of labor law. No survey of businesses identifying RTW as a central concern."

Continues...

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