Virginia’s General Assembly recently killed — for this year, anyway — legislation to repeal the state’s long-standing right-to-work law. The bill had been introduced by Big Labor partisans in the state House and Senate, who thought the new Democratic majorities would hand union officials the power to compel workers to subsidize a union or else be fired.
Meanwhile, across the Potomac in Washington, the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives voted to pass H.R. 2474, the so-called PRO Act, a bill designed to overturn right-to-work laws in all 27 states that currently have them and grant a swath of other giveaways to Big Labor.
House Democrats should learn from their Virginia counterparts’ failed attempts at repeal: Right-to-work laws enjoy broad support among the public. They are important for the economy and essential for protecting workers’ individual freedom to make decisions about their workplace.
One reason Virginia lawmakers didn’t want to vote on right-to-work repeal may have to do with the fact that most people don’t agree with forced unionism. A Gallup poll found that 82% agree that “no American should be required to join any private organization, like a labor union, against his will.”
The poll broke down support along party lines, which helps explain why repeal bills failed in Virginia’s Democrat-controlled State House: “Most Democrats favor right-to-work laws, and their support nearly matches that of Republicans.” The poll found that 71% of people would vote for a right-to-work law, while only 21% said they would vote against it.
As those who blocked the repeal effort likely understood, Big Labor’s massive forced-dues-funded political war chest can’t overcome voters’ anger over granting a special interest to the power to dragoon unwilling workers into subsidizing union activities. Those in Congress who voted to do just that should take note.
Right-to-work states hold a huge advantage in creating jobs and expanding their economies because “many manufacturing and supply chain companies and the site-selection consultants who serve them will only consider ‘right to work’ states for new investments.”
That’s according to a fiscal impact statement issued by Virginia’s Department of Planning and Budget in response to the bill to repeal the right-to-work law. It found that right to work has been critical to the commonwealth’s robust economy: “Over the previous 18 months, Virginia announced nearly 60 projects in the manufacturing and supply chain sectors that represented 8,400 jobs and $6 billion in capital investment.”
“VDEP [the Virginia Economic Development Partnership] believes many of these announcements would not have occurred if Virginia were not a ‘right to work’ state at the time the companies made their location decisions,” the impact statement continues. It also says that 349 new projects, bringing 37,000 total jobs and more than $11 billion in capital investment, would be at risk if the General Assembly were to eliminate right to work.
These benefits are not specific to the Old Dominion. A recent National Institute for Labor Relations Research analysis of Department of Labor data found that the percentage growth in the number of people employed in right-to-work states (10.8%) was more than twice that of forced-unionism states (5.0%) over the past decade.
Economic growth is a benefit, but the principle behind every state’s right-to-work law is freedom. These laws protect workers from being forced to pay union dues or fees just to get or keep a job. The issue boils down to individual freedom versus union coercion; individual workers should be the ones to decide if a union deserves their financial support rather than paying because otherwise, they would be fired.
That win-win combination of freedom for workers and the positive economic benefits that right-to-work states enjoy makes it all the more shocking that 66 House Democrats from right-to-work states voted for the PRO Act, which would wipe out the very protections their own constituents enjoy.
For their voters, come Election Day, the choice will be clearer than ever: On the one side, the freedom and jobs that right to work provides, and on the other, handing union bosses the power to force workers to pay up or be fired.
Mark Mix is the president of the National Right to Work Committee.
