Right To Work States Continue to Pull U.S. Economy Above Water

Just read Louisiana's Governor Bobby Jindal's recent letter: Dear Friends - The last couple weeks have been chock full of major economic development wins for Louisiana. In Central Louisiana, we announced that UPS Midstream Services Inc. is investing more than $3.9 million to construct a new full-service machine facility. ... In Northeast Louisiana, Drax Biomass International announced that the company is building a new wood pellet facility in Bastrop and a storage-and-shipping facility in Baton Rouge. As NBC33 reported, the two projects will combine to create ... new jobs for Louisiana. LocalMed, a digital healthcare startup and homegrown Louisiana company, will create new jobs in Baton Rouge. These announcements come on the heels of perhaps some of the biggest economic development news Louisiana has ever had.
MIX: Democratic Party’s Big Labor backbone

MIX: Democratic Party’s Big Labor backbone

Right to Work top target for union allies From the Washington Times: As President Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden campaign for re-election, they feel compelled time and again to remind anyone who has gathered to hear them that America's economic troubles started well before they got to the White House. [media-credit name=" " align="alignright" width="480"][/media-credit]American voters surely know that. The Obama ticket's real problem is that more and more voters are coming to understand that the current administration has no clue about which policies would help the national economy, and workers in particular, get back on track. Emblematic of the president's befuddlement was his jibe against Right to Work laws at a Labor Day rally in Toledo, Ohio. Right to Work laws make it illegal to deny an applicant a job or to fire an employee simply for refusing to pay dues or fees to an unwanted union. Mr. Obama insisted without offering any evidence that individual freedom of choice over union affiliation is somehow bad for wages and salaries. At a campaign event in Detroit the same day, Mr. Biden repeated basically the same canard and vowed that the Obama administration would block national Right to Work legislation. What are the facts about Right to Work and employee compensation? Nationwide, inflation-adjusted U.S. Commerce Department data show that wage and salary disbursements to private-sector employees grew by just 1.8 percent from 2000 to 2010. That's the smallest gain for any decade since the Great Depression. But regional data show that employees and job seekers in the 22 states that had Right to Work laws on the books at the beginning of the millennium fared far better than average, with real private-sector wages and salaries increasing by 8.6 percent, or nearly five times the national average.