The so-called “right-to-work” issue has already disrupted the Indiana General Assembly. The Republicans’ insistence on making it their top legislative priority has been met by Democrats failing to show up for work again in an effort to slow down the GOP majority.
The Dems behavior is bad, but predictable. They and their constituents are that passionate against right to work. The Republicans know it, and thus knowingly touched off this political standoff.
They will say it’s because they believe as strongly in the benefits of right to work. But here’s reality: There is no definitive evidence that right-to-work laws do what their supporters say. And there’s no definitive evidence it doesn’t.
So why touch off State War II? It isn’t necessary, and it’s bad for Indiana.
For each claim by right-to-work supporters, there are counter claims by opponents who call the movement “right-to-work-for-less.”
Two independent evaluations by news organizations show how difficult it is to get to the truth — and how dangerous it is to put too much credence into any one set of “facts.”
One was an evaluation by Politifact, a Pulitzer Prize-winning news organization operated by the Tampa Bay (formerly St. Petersburg) Times. It investigated a claim by conservative broadcaster Bill O’Reilly that right-to-work states have “a much lower level of unemployment.”
O’Reilly’s assertion was proclaimed “mostly true.” The hedging came from his use of the word “much.”
Politifact reported that in December 2010, the unemployment rate in 22 right-to-work states was 9.17 percent, compared to 9.65 in the other 28 states. The national unemployment rate was 9.4. Of the 11 with the lowest unemployment rate, eight were right-to-work states. But three were not, suggesting that more factors are at play in unemployment statistics.
Another right-to-work advocate, Mitt Romney, said, “right to work is the way to go if you want good jobs.”
The Washington Post’s “The Fact Checker” looked into that statement and noted that it could be considered only partly true. “On the whole, union-friendly states fare worse than right-to-work states when it comes to job creation in the past decade. ... But despite Romney’s assertion, those figures don’t prove that right-to-work laws help attract jobs,” it reported. The Post quoted Gordon Lafer, associate professor at the University of Oregon Labor Education and Research Center: “It’s the same as saying that states with names that start with the letters ‘n’ through ‘z’ grew faster over the past decade. That’s actually true, but it’s not meaningful in policy terms.”
Also important for job growth are natural resources, infrastructure, work force quality, location, standard of living, schools, tax rates and other policy decisions not related to unionization, the Post noted, quoting Jared Berstein, a former Labor Department economist. The Post’s “The Fact Checker” concluded: “The bottom line is that the right set of jobs numbers can favor pro-union arguments just as easily as anti-union arguments.”
The only thing sure about the issue is that it will cause a huge political fight and get in the way of all other legislative business. Indiana simply does not need that.
The GOP should back off the RTW agenda; the Democrats should get to work; and together, they should govern the state by mending fences rather than erecting them.