washingtonexaminer.com
Danahers closing said
Rep. Richard Neal D-Mass. lamenting the loss of a plant that had employed 330 people in Massachusetts. Now those jobs are going to Arkansas and to Texas. It was April 2005. Neal was taking the opportunity of a House committee
hearing on competition with China to complain instead about how his own state was losing jobs to states with less hostile business climates. Rep. Bill Thomas R-Calif. then chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee mildly rebuked Neals deviation from the topic noting that Massachusetts had shot itself in the foot with high taxes and compulsory union membership. Thomas added that at some point perhaps the good citizens of Massachusetts will pick up the drift.
Businesses often consider government interference when they make decisions about where to locate. One instance of such interference is the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 which established a regimen of special treatment for labor during an era when nearly one in three employees were union members. Today unions have lost relevance for more than 93 percent of American workers in the private sector but the distortions of this law remain with us harming the ability of American businesses to compete. To see its results we need only look south and west to the success of our nations 22 right-to-work states.
Section 14(b) of the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 allows states to pass right-to-work laws which bar union membership from being used as a condition of employment. In practice these laws make unions significantly less powerful and less disruptive than did the original NLRA rules and with tremendously positive economic results for everybody concerned. A recent study by the staff of Sen. Jim DeMint R-S.C. pointed to some revealing data: Between 1993 and 2009 right-to-work states created jobs twice as fast as states where forced unionism is permitted and enjoyed 10 percent faster growth in personal income. Right-to-work states account for only 40 percent of the U.S. population but hosted 60 percent of the nations new businesses during that same period.
Such data contrasts mightily with facts like this: Unions spent $400 million to elect President Obama and Democrats in 2008 largely because of promises to use the federal government to restore labor to its former position of strength. The centerpiece of that effort was card check which would have abolished secret ballots in workplace representation elections but it failed in Congress.
So now the Obama campaign to rescue dying unions is focused on the National Labor Relations Board. The NLRB which is run by Obama appointees has filed a complaint against Boeing Aircraft Co. for expanding its manufacturing operations into DeMints right-to-work state. Obama is only trying to help his union campaign donors -- as usual -- but this effort is bound to backfire. Right-to-work states are demonstrating daily that workers their families and taxpayers all benefit when employees have the freedom to choose whether to join a union. There are 22 such states now and odds are more are coming which will be good economic news for them -- and the country.
