For decades, states like New York, California and Illinois have been paying a high price for allowing dues-hungry union bosses to continue getting workers fired for refusal to bankroll their organizations.
Year after year, taxpayers have been leaving forced-unionism states, and the cumulative loss of taxpayers has been cutting into their revenue bases.
Recently updated data from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) indicate the cost of forced unionism soared by 65% on annual returns filed from 2021 to 2023 combined, compared to 2018 to 2020 combined.
National Right to Work Committee Vice President Matthew Leen commented: “It shouldn’t require fiscal catastrophes to persuade state politicians to stop hurting the vast majority of their constituents just so union bosses’ special privileges can be perpetuated.
“But state insolvency may well arrive before Big Labor politicians in states like New York, California and Illinois acknowledge the truth about the devastating effects of forced unionism.”
The facts speak for themselves. As a group, the 23 states that lacked Right to Work laws from 2021 to 2023 lost a net total of $179.0 billion in adjusted gross income (AGI). That’s a 65% greater loss than what these same states endured in 2018-20.
Data furnished by the IRS’s Statistics of Income (SOI) division make it possible to calculate the sum total of wages, salaries, and other income taxpayers take with them when they move out of state.
Personal income tax filers moving out of a forced-unionism state in 2023 reported a total of $187.6 billion in adjusted gross income (AGI) on the IRS forms they filed that year, or $95,163 per filer.
Tax filers moving into a forced unionism state reported a total of $147.6 billion in income, or $85,622 per filer.
Both because of their substantial taxpayer losses due to net domestic out-migration, and because the tax filers they gained reported $9,514 less income apiece than the tax filers they lost, forced unionism states lost a total of $40.0 billion in AGI in a single year.
All of the nine states (California, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio and Minnesota) suffering the worst losses of income, in absolute terms, due to taxpayer out-migration in the most recent filing year for which data are now available lack Right to Work laws.
“While compulsory unionism is wrong, plain and simple,” noted Mr. Leen, “it is also an economic albatross.”
Mr. Leen explained that, even as states that fail to shield employees from federal pro-forced unionism policies are harmed most of all, the entire country suffers severe damage:
“The union-label politicians who regularly get elected and reelected because of Big Labor’s forced dues-funded support favor higher taxes and more red-tape regulation of business.”
“This is true at the federal, state and local levels,” added Mr. Leen.
“Private-sector job growth nationwide is hindered by the forced-dues-funded power of Big Labor politicians.
“The congressmen and senators who foisted compulsory union dues on the entire country in 1935, and their successors who perpetuate this unjust system today, are the principal culprits.
“It is federal law, not the law of any state, that today forces millions of private sector workers across America to fork over dues or fees to a union, whether they want it or not, as a condition of employment.
“Committee members are determined to abolish this unfair and economically destructive coercion of workers from coast to coast.”
Adoption by Congress of S.533/ H.R.1232, the National Right to Work Act, would be a huge step in the right direction. It would repeal all the current forced-dues provisions in federal labor law.
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The ILA hierarchy’s clear motive in suing two carriers that had docked at Leatherman, and in its threat to sue others if they did the same, was to bully the South Carolina Ports Authority (SCPA), with whom the union had no contract, into selling out the freedom of union-free port employees who then operated heavy equipment.
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Gov. Hochul’s decision to back additional bloating of government pensions, despite the severe blow it will deal to already overburdened property taxpayers, as she seeks reelection this year is about Big Labor monopoly power and the extraordinary political power that it affords union bosses.