Union members in states that also have right-to-work laws pay considerably less in membership dues than those in states without the laws, and their union leaders often receive less in compensation.
A new study released Monday by the conservative Heritage Foundation found that right-to-work laws give the members more leverage to pay what they think is fair for the representation they receive from the union because the law allows them to leave the labor organization if they want.
Members in non-right-to-work states lack that leverage because their states allow union/management contracts that force them to either join or support a union as a condition of employment.
James Sherk, the foundation’s senior labor policy analyst, says that in a state without the laws, the unions are effectively a monopoly: “You don’t have to work at that company, but if you do you must accept the union’s representation and pay dues … And in many states, workers with certain skills are only going to find union jobs because the union has organized the entire industry in that region.”
Basic economic theory says the monopoly will take advantage of that status to increase costs on consumers, which in this case would be members.
Sherk’s study found that the average annual membership dues paid by a union member in a non-right-to-work state was $587, while the average dues in a right to work state was $458. After weighting for various factors, such as the relative size of unions — larger ones can afford to charge less — the difference is starker: $432 in right-to-work states versus $610 in others.
The analysis also found significant differences in the salaries paid to top union officials. In right-to-work states union presidents, vice presidents and treasurers receive an average annual salary of about $88,000, while the salaries range between $105,000-$111,000 in the other states.
The weighting is significant because union presence is substantially less in states with right-to-work laws, and the laws are widely seen as the reason. Unions have historically struggled to gain a foothold in states with the laws and have seen membership declines after states adopted the law.
For example, Virginia, which has the law, has a unionization rate of just 5 percent, Labor Department data shows. The adjacent state of Maryland, which does not have the law, has a rate more than twice as high, 11.6 percent. Overall, 75 percent of all union members are in states without right-to-work laws.
Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, which is backed by organized labor, said the Heritage study is flawed because it does not take into account the relative cost-of-living differences between states with and without the law.
“Since non-right-to-work [states] tend to be northern and coastal and have higher housing costs, these higher living costs could entirely explain what they find. Moreover, they have very [little] information on the wages earned by workers or what industries they work in as factors,” Mishel said in an email.
Sherk disputed that. “To control for costs of living I used the average earnings of private sector union members by state and year. Those earnings vary according to local costs of living [more in the Northeast, less in the South].”
Critics of right-to-work laws argue that they harm workers because they result in less-powerful unions that cannot effectively represent workers. Sherk is skeptical, arguing that the unions would still have plenty of resources for their main purpose collective bargaining with management.
“Charging lower dues means unions have less resources for projects that the union leadership cares about and the membership does not — i.e. political activism. Hopefully RTW impels unions to focus on their core mission. But in terms of the basics of negotiating and implementing a contract they have plenty of resources left for that — very few unions spend even half their budget on representational activities. Most spend a lot less,” he said.
