If you ever wonder who’s losing, in conversation or in politics, just look at who gets the most aggressively defensive. In an editorial explaining how “right to work” states operate, the WSJ described Unions’ reaction as jumping “immediately to Defcon 1.”
Unions know that they cannot compete against nonunionized workers. They are at “Defcon 1” because they know that they can only exist if no nonunionized workers are allowed to compete with them.
Unions want voters to believe that right-to-work laws “ban or bust” unions. This is false.
Human nature busts unions. When hard work, rather than tenure or workplace alliances, leads to success, harder working workplaces become more successful.
When tenure or bloated alliances are rewarded, hard work gets overlooked, and the entire venture is less successful overall. This costs the enterprise and the state revenue and jobs.
This seems obvious. Yet the WSJ describes a “fault line” between the majority of American states where union membership is not optional and the right-to-work states:
The study also found that from 1977 throgh 2007 there was “a very strong and highly statistically significant relationship between right-to-work laws and economic growth.” Right-to-work states experienced a 23% faster rise in per capita income over that period. The two regions that have lost the most jobs in recent years, the once-industrial Northeast and Midwest, are mostly forced-union states.
Unionization fails on nearly every measure. Yet strong-arm tactics keep these groups so firmly entrenched that many union-unfriendly lawmakers simply cannot afford to make the concessions required to loosen unions’ hold and install worker choice.
This makes no sense. Unions are bad for growth. Now is not the time for entrenchment; now is the time for rolling up our sleeves and working as hard as we can. When a single policy objectively restricts economic growth as much as forced-unionization does, lawmakers should prioritize repealing that policy.
The WSJ concludes: “We hope Republicans don’t flinch.”
We cannot afford it.
