Oregon: Right to Work Would Create 110,000 New Jobs

According to a new study by Cascade Policy Institute, if Oregon were to allow workers the freedom to choose to be a member of a union and allow businesses to hire non-union workers, it would lead to 110,000 new jobs.  The high cost of employing union workers drives many businesses away from forced-union states.  A Right to Work Oregon would also lead to 14 percent more taxpaying families moving to Oregon each year and $2.7 billion more in wages and salaries for Oregonians.

Written by Randall Pozdena and Eric Fruits, the same Oregon economists who analyzed the negative impact of tax measures 66 and 67, the Right to Work study concludes that enacting Right to Work legislation this year would lead to:

• 50,000 more people working here in five years; 110,000 more working here in ten years.

• $2.7 billion more in wage and salary income in five years; $7.0 billion more in ten years.

• 14 percent more taxpaying families per year moving into Oregon from non-right-to-work states.

Cascade Senior Policy Analyst and founder Steve Buckstein praised the study for not only finding a correlation between right-to-work policy and economic growth, but for actually pointing to a causal link. In other words, Buckstein stated:  We conclude that the right to work actually contributes to more employment, higher incomes, more net in-migration of taxpaying households and faster economic growth. It is, therefore, a policy we believe Oregon should adopt.

The only question we have is — What is Oregon waiting for?