San Diego-Area Reliance Metal Center Employees Overwhelmingly Vote to Remove Teamsters Union Officials
Successful effort comes as Biden-Harris NLRB tightens restrictions on workers voting out unions
Union Bosses’ States Hemorrhaging Income
Taxpayers Move With Their Bank Accounts to Right to Work States
For decades, states like New York, California and Illinois have evidently 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, far more taxpayers have been leaving forced dues states than moving into them. The cumulative loss has been cutting into their revenue bases.
Recently released data from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) indicate the cost of forced unionism soared by roughly 75% on annual returns filed in 2021 and 2022 combined, compared to 2019 and 2020 combined.
National Right to Work Committee President Mark Mix 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 in 2021 and 2022 lost a net total of $139.0 billion in adjusted gross income (AGI). That’s a 75% greater loss than what these same states endured in 2019-20.
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.
Forced-Dues States Lose An Average of $114,122 Per Fleeing Tax Filer
Personal income tax filers moving out of a forced-unionism state in 2021 reported a total of $238.5 billion in adjusted gross income (AGI) on the IRS forms they filed for that year, or $114,122 per filer.
Tax filers moving into a forced-unionism state reported a total of $172.7 billion in income, or $100,653 per filer.
Both because of their substantial taxpayer losses due to net domestic out-migration, and because the tax filers they gained reported $13,469 less income apiece than the taxpayers they lost, forced-unionism states lost a total of $65.7 billion in AGI in 2021 alone.
All of the eight states (California, New York, Illinois, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Minnesota) suffering the worst losses of income, in absolute terms, due to taxpayer out-migration in the most recent tax filing year for which data are now available lack Right to Work laws.
Meanwhile, the eight states enjoying the biggest absolute gains in income due to taxpayer in-migration (Florida, Texas, South Carolina, Tennessee, North Carolina, Arizona, Nevada and Idaho) are all Right to Work.
“Compulsory unionism is wrong, plain and simple,” affirmed Mr. Mix.
“It is also an economic albatross as our nation strives to get aggregate employment levels substantially above where they were before 2020’s severe, COVID-19 related downturn.”
Federal Politicians Bear Primary Blame
Mr. Mix explained that, while 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.
“Private-sector job growth in all 50 states, including Right to Work states, is hindered by the actions 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.”
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