About a year ago, advocates and the Far Right where lauding the passage of right-to-work legislation in Michigan as “a turning point for economic health.” Now, this past week Lt. Governor Peter Kinder said “I believe we will pass right-to-work next year and bypass (Nixon) entirely by putting it on the referendum ballot for voters,” Good luck with that. History has shown us that thank s to a 1978 referendum ballot was defeated by over 75% of Missourians.
The fact is in that states with right- to -work laws, wages are lower. And there are 24 right-to-work states where facts are available. Low prices achieved via subsistence wages create a majority with less buying power, even with those lower prices. Neither our consumer economy nor the majority’s standard of living can improve under this model. The rise of unions tracks perfectly with the rise of a prosperous middle class and their decline tracks just as perfectly with middle class losses. Missouri would be a right-to-work state of the Republican controlled General Assembly had its way, but Gov. Jay Nixon would veto such a bill. The Republicans do not have enough votes to override the Governor’s veto. Corporations have been moving out of the Saint Louis Metro area into Kansas, Iowa, and Arkansas because of lower wages and incentives. Saint Louis wants to stop that movement as soon as possible. The middle class has to have both adults in a family working in order to make a living. Working families need to be able to support the family and educate their children.
In right-to-work states this will be very difficult to do. The middle class slips on down the economic ladder. It’s long past time for the 98 percent to stop buying into discredited polices that have and will never delivered the promised results. We need to learn something from the example of Charlie Brown, Lucy and her football. Let’s look at the great fallacy at the extremists (Far-Right) Republicans (which Bob Boyer is 100% for Right-To-Work) attempt to make Missouri a right-to-work state. The New Republican Parties Job Creation plan is not so much about creating jobs as about politics and about punishing unions. And in the end the middle class workers will suffer. By the most telling economic indicators, right-to-work states trail states where unions retain the right to make union membership a condition of employment, if the employees they represent vote to do so.
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The sources for this blog are: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis and U.S. Census Bureau. There has been significant job growth in many right-to-work states, which have become magnets for companies that want to avoid the kind of wage and benefit that collective bargaining helps assure for working people. Such companies create jobs alright; just not the kind Missouri legislators would want to see their own kids reduced to. But job growth in right-to-work states is not leading to economic opportunity up and down the ladder, and it may exacerbate poverty in states like Missouri where incomes have been declining for a decade, but have still not reached right-to-work lows.
Our nation has shifted away from manufacturing, created huge trade deficits and failed to invest in things like high tech job training. None of this can be solved with right-to-work. Of the 10 states with the highest incomes, for example, only one is a right-to-work state, and only three right-to-work states are in the top 20. On average, right-to-work states have incomes that trail union states by more than $5,000, and there are 24 right-to-work states. Eight of the 10 states with the lowest over-all incomes are right-to-work states. And among the states with the highest rates of people without medical insurance (a sign of the quality of jobs available), seven of 10 are right-to-work. Eight of the 10 states with highest poverty rates are right-to-work. Missouri is fortunate to have elected Gov. Jay Nixon who will veto any Republican sponsored bill to pass right-to-work into law in this state.