Within the next few weeks, Missouri likely will become the 28th state to adopt a right-to-work law, as the state legislature is working quickly to get a bill before the new Republican governor, Eric Greitens, who has vowed to sign it.
A draft version was approved by a House committee this week on an 8-4 vote and a Senate committee is expected to take it up next week. The full House could vote on it next week, and it could pass out of legislature as early as the end of this month.
“The leadership is of the thinking that the faster, the better,” said Tim Jones, former Missouri House speaker. There’s no doubt that the votes are there to pass it, he added. The legislature passed a version in 2015 when Jones was still speaker, but it was vetoed by Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon.
“Everyone has already taken a position on this and we haven’t had enough turnover in the legislature to think it will be any different this time,” said Jones, who now serves as head of the Missouri Club for Growth, a conservative nonprofit.
James Harris, executive director of the Missouri-based Adam Smith Foundation, a conservative nonprofit that has pushed for right-to-work, expects that the House will move the legislation next week while the Senate may take a few extra weeks. There is a strong sense that Missouri will fall behind other states economically if it doesn’t pass legislation, he said.
“Seven of the eight states that border us are right-to-work now,” Harris said. The lone exception is Illinois. Missouri is concerned that businesses will consider locating in neighboring states such as Indiana or Tennessee.
“Though Missouri’s unemployment rate is below the national average at 4.7 percent, we trail several neighboring right-to-work states. The unemployment rate in Arkansas is 4.0 percent, Iowa is 3.8 percent, Kansas is 4.3 percent and Nebraska is 3.4 percent,” Harris said.
A spokesman for the Missouri AFL-CIO labor federation, which has led opposition to the legislation, could not be reached for comment.
Right-to-work laws prohibit contracts between unions and management that force all workers to join the union or at least pay it a regular fee. Workers must pay or are fined.
The requirements, called “security clauses” by unions, are a regular feature in non-right-to-work states and are key to unions’ financial power. In states that prohibit the practice, unions tend to be much weaker because they have a harder time keeping members.
Unions and most liberals argue the provisions are a matter of fairness since collective bargaining benefits all workers. Conservatives counter it should be the individual worker’s right to decide whether to back a union. They also argue that the states with right-to-work laws have an easier time attracting and keeping businesses.
Should Missouri adopt the law, it would mark an amazing comeback for right-to-work, which several states adopted in the 1940s and 1950s but the movement for it stalled afterward. As recently as 2012, 22 states had the laws, and all but three dated to 1963 or earlier. Indiana, Michigan, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Kentucky have adopted versions in the last five years.
