Canada’s PM: We Can’t Compete with Right to Work States, but can with NY, Illinois, & California

In his recent Washington Examiner Op-Ed, National Right to Work President Mark Mix points out that the Canadian PM has no fear of competing with the sluggish economies of Forced-Unionism States like California, New York, Connecticut, Ohio, Illinois, and others.  However, he no longer wants to compete with with the robust Right to Work States.  In fact, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wanted President Trump agree to rubber-stamp a federal law overturning all state right-to-work protections for private-sector employees as a precondition for Canada to remain at the NAFTA negotiating table.

… As the Toronto Globe and Mail reported last month, the Trudeau government strongly believes that voluntary unionism gives the U.S. an “advantage” over Canada “in attracting jobs.”

Normally, any powerful elected official who made such a claim would be denounced and ridiculed by union officials. But Trudeau wants to “fix” the U.S.’s right-to-work advantage by eliminating all state right-to-work laws rather than by prohibiting forced unionism in his own country. Consequently, Trudeau is now being hailed as a hero by union bosses such as Jerry Dias, the president of Unifor, a Canadian union conglomerate.

Union-label Canadian politicians’ improbable vehicle for destroying the right to work is the ongoing renegotiation of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement. …

Dias encouraged the Trudeau government to demand that Congress and President Trump agree to rubber-stamp a federal law overturning all state right-to-work protections for private-sector employees as a precondition for Canada to remain at the NAFTA negotiating table.

Now, U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, are vowing to “level the playing field” between Canada and the U.S. by pushing for enactment of legislation that would gut all state right-to-work laws by repealing Section 14(b) of the federal Taft-Hartley Act. This means that the right to work’s supporters and foes alike now agree on the point that voluntary unionism attracts job creators.

The question Dias, Hoffa, Warren, Brown and others fail to answer satisfactorily is why businesses prefer to hire in right-to-work states. The preference plainly has nothing to do with workers’ real purchasing power. The fact is, U.S. Commerce Department data, adjusted for regional cost-of-living differences according to an index calculated by the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center, show that in 2016 the average annual compensation per right-to-work state manufacturing employee was $77,691. That’s more than $4,100 higher than the average for states that still lacked right-to-work protections in 2016. …

for the full Mark Mix Op-Ed click here to go to the Washington Examiner