Indiana Workers Demand Their Right to Work

Indiana Workers Demand Their Right to Work

From the Wall Street Journal: The labor reform story of the year is unfolding in Indiana, which Republicans who dominate the legislature are trying to make the nation's 23rd right-to-work state. Democrats are resorting to the old run-and-hide ploy, but this could be a huge economic boon to the Hoosier State. Big Labor portrays right to work as a radical change, but it merely lets individual workers decide if they want to join a union. In non-right-to-work states, workers typically must pay union dues once their worksite is organized—whether they want to pay or not. This enhances union clout and the cash to dominate state politics. Many industrial and manufacturing businesses only consider right-to-work states as locales for expanding their operations. The nearest right-to-work state in the Midwest is Iowa, so Indiana could set itself further apart from such high-tax, unionized havens as Illinois and Michigan. According to Chief Executive Magazine's annual CEO survey, Indiana has climbed to sixth from 16th among state business climates, thanks to reforms since 2004 under Governor Mitch Daniels. But the state's biggest liability remains its labor market. A Forbes survey last year ranked Indiana 34th in business climate, partially because of a dismal 44th rank in labor "supply," which includes unionization. Democrats in the state House played hooky for three days last week in an effort to deny a quorum for voting on the law. They returned to work yesterday after Democratic leader B. Patrick Bauer acknowledged that they "can't stay out forever." House members face penalties of $1,000 per day for walkouts longer than three days, so the obstruction could get expensive.
Obama Team: More Forced Unionism ‘Needed’

Obama Team: More Forced Unionism ‘Needed’

Massive Union Job Losses Make Case For ‘Card-Check’ Legislation? (Source: February 2010 NRTWC Newsletter) On January 22, the U.S. Labor Department issued a report providing a snapshot, in numbers, of some of the latest damage wrought to employees, employers, and the economy as a whole by government-imposed union monopoly bargaining. The report shows that, in one major business sector after another, the jobs of workers who labor under forced unionism were far more likely to be destroyed during the 2008-2009 recession than were the jobs of union-free workers. In the hard-hit telecommunications sector, for example, the number of jobs subject to union monopoly bargaining plummeted by 20.7% last year, over four times the decline for union-free jobs. Unionized construction jobs plunged by 20.0%. Over the same period, union-free construction jobs fell by 12.4%. 'These Numbers Show a Need For Congress to Pass’ S.560/H.R.1409 The number of Big Labor-controlled manufacturing jobs declined by 14.3%, nearly four percentage points more than the decline for union-free jobs in manufacturing. Overall, unionized private-sector employment sank by 9.4% last year, a decline more than double the total private-sector job loss of 4.4%.