Right to Work Blog

Spending a record $60 million on the presidential campaign alone, the big government union American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) is putting 40,000 “volunteers” on the ground in Ohio to carry the state for Sen. Barack Obama and, as AFSCME union boss Gerald McEntee says to “increase worker-friendly majorities” in the House and Senate. “Worker friendly?”

Those “worker friendly” House and Senate members will eliminate workers’ right to a secret ballot election. Those “worker friendly” House and Senate members will coerce more workers into joining unions as never before. Those “worker friendly” House and Senate members will try to eliminate your Right to Work.

The only thing they are friendly to is the union bosses who put them in power.

Readers know the difficulty Michigan is having creating jobs and economic prosperity. But defenders of Big Labor like to deny that the regulations and costs the United Auto Workers (UAW) and other big unions have imposed on the state have anything to do with the state’s mired economic conditions. Albeit already difficult, it is getting harder to make such an argument.

Phil Gramm and Mike Solon writing in the Wall Street Journalnote:

The Competitiveness Index created by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) identifies “16 policy variables that have a proven impact on the migration of capital — both investment capital and human capital — into and out of states.” Its analysis shows that “generally speaking, states that spend less, especially on income transfer programs, and states that tax less, particularly on productive activities such as working or investing, experience higher growth rates than states that tax and spend more.”

Ranking states by domestic migration, per-capita income growth and employment growth, ALEC found that from 1996 through 2006, Texas, Florida and Arizona were the three most successful states. Illinois, Ohio and Michigan were the three least successful.

The rewards for success were huge. Texas gained 1.7 million net new jobs, Florida gained 1.4 million and Arizona gained 600,000. While the U.S. average job growth percentage was 9.9%, Texas, Florida and Arizona had job growth of 18.5%, 21.4% and 28.9%, respectively.

. . .

There also appears to be a clear difference between union interests and the worker interests. Texas, Florida and Arizona are right-to-work states, while Michigan, Ohio and Illinois are not. Michigan, Ohio and Illinois impose significantly higher minimum wages than Texas, Florida and Arizona. Yet with all the proclaimed benefits of unionism and higher minimum wages, Texas, Florida and Arizona workers saw their real income grow more than twice as fast as workers in Michigan, Ohio and Illinois.

Incredibly, the business climate in Michigan is now so unfavorable that it has overwhelmed the considerable comparative advantage in auto production that Michigan spent a century building up. No one should let Michigan politicians blame their problems solely on the decline of the U.S. auto industry. Yes, Michigan lost 83,000 auto manufacturing jobs during the past decade and a half, but more than 91,000 new auto manufacturing jobs sprung up in Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and Texas.

Gramm and Solon ask whether any of these facts play into the presidential debate and the positions the candidates have on issues like Right to Work?

So what do the state laboratories tell us about the potential success of the economic programs presented by Barack Obama and John McCain?

Mr. McCain will lower taxes. Mr. Obama will raise them, especially on small businesses. To understand why, you need to know something about the “infamous” top 1% of income tax filers: In order to avoid high corporate tax rates and the double taxation of dividends, small business owners have increasingly filed as individuals rather than corporations. When Democrats talk about soaking the rich, it isn’t the Rockefellers they’re talking about; it’s the companies where most Americans work. Three out of four individual income tax filers in the top 1% are, in fact, small businesses.

In the name of taxing the rich, Mr. Obama would raise the marginal tax rates to over 50% on millions of small businesses that provide 75% of all new jobs in America. Investors and corporations will also pay higher taxes under the Obama program, but, as the Michigan-Ohio-Illinois experience painfully demonstrates, workers ultimately pay for higher taxes in lower wages and fewer jobs.

Mr. Obama would spend all the savings from walking out of Iraq to expand the government. Mr. McCain would reserve all the savings from our success in Iraq to shrink the deficit, as part of a credible and internally consistent program to balance the budget by the end of his first term. Mr. Obama’s program offers no hope, or even a promise, of ever achieving a balanced budget.

Mr. Obama would stimulate the economy by increasing federal spending. Mr. McCain would stimulate the economy by cutting the corporate tax rate. Mr. Obama would expand unionism by denying workers the right to a secret ballot on the decision to form a union, and would dramatically increase the minimum wage. Mr. Obama would also expand the role of government in the economy, and stop reforms in areas like tort abuse.

The states have already tested the McCain and Obama programs, and the results are clear. We now face a national choice to determine if everything that has failed the families of Michigan, Ohio and Illinois will be imposed on a grander scale across the nation. In an appropriate twist of fate, Michigan and Ohio, the two states that have suffered the most from the policies that Mr. Obama proposes, have it within their power not only to reverse their own misfortunes but to spare the nation from a similar fate.

Financial Week takes an insightful look at Big Labor’s big hope and big bet — the effort to end the secret ballot election — despite underestimating the amount they will spend to buy enactment of their scheme:

The labor movement’s big-money campaign for Sen. Barack Obama faces stiff challenges in getting rank-and-file union members to overcome their concerns about the candidate, according to labor specialists and polls.

“There’s been a cultural and political divide between union members and Democratic candidates who may not care as much about trade and some other issues as they do,” said Bruce Cain, a professor of political science at the University of California at Berkeley. “That makes it hard for union leaders to deliver the vote.”

This clearly worries union leaders, who see the November election as pivotal in getting key legislation passed. At the top of the list: the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill that would allow workers to organize via card checks rather than the usual secret ballots. Mr. Obama endorsed the legislation, which passed the House before stalling in the Senate. Sen. John McCain opposed it. Last week, U.S. Chamber of Commerce president Tom Donohue said his group would lobby against the bill.

“All of labor’s eggs are placed in this legislation’s basket,” said Mike Asensio, a management labor lawyer for Baker Hostetler in Columbus, Ohio. “If they don’t get the bill passed, it raises a specter about their future.”

Given the stakes, it’s hardly surprising that organized labor is splashing massive amounts of cash on the election. The AFL-CIO and its 56 member unions plan to spend a whopping $300 million to support Democrats in the presidential and congressional campaigns this fall and produce about 250,000 volunteers. The breakaway Service Employees International Union plans to pitch in another $85 million.

To put that in perspective, the Democratic Party as a whole had raised $416 million through July.

The campaign at the AFL-CIO is typical of labor’s big-money strategy. The union will target 3 million undecided members, voting family members and retirees in 24 battleground states, the group’s political director, Karen Ackerman, said. That target group consists of about a quarter of all union members.

The umbrella labor organization’s highest priorities will be voters in Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania—swing states with large numbers of union members. It plans to spend as much as $18 million to reach undecided union voters and others in those three states with TV ads, flyers, phone calls, e-mails, mailings and one-on-one visits.

“Union members vote at a higher rate than the rest of the population,” said David Karol, a political science professor at the University of California at Berkeley. “Many are basically Democratic who will end up coming around.”

Maybe. But the largest block of undecided U.S. voters consists of older white, blue-collar, church-going men and women, according to a recent bipartisan poll of 1,000 registered voters conducted by Lake Research Partners and the Tarrance Group.

Blue-collar workers in Macomb County, Mich., a Detroit suburb, favor Mr. McCain over Mr. Obama by a 51%-42% margin, according to a survey by Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg that was released Aug. 25.

The Michigan workers, many of whom voted for Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, harbor doubts about Mr. Obama’s experience, values and patriotism, with lesser concerns about his race, the poll found. “Many folks have never voted for an African-American,” Ms. Ackerman granted. “It’s complicated by unfamiliarity, inexperience and rumors. Our job is to make sure people know who Barack Obama is and what he stands for.”

But earlier labor-funded ads seem to focus on what John McCain supposedly stands for. One flier about Mr. McCain’s proposal to privatize Social Security said: “McCain’s worth over $100 million…. He owns 10 houses…. He flies around on a $12.6 million corporate jet…. He walks around in $520 loafers…. If John McCain lost his Social Security, he’d get by just fine. Would you?”

An online video showcases Mr. McCain’s houses and condominiums in Arizona, California and Virginia while also needling the Arizona senator about his calfskin loafers made by Salvatore Ferragamo. The video, distributed by the AFL-CIO and SEIU, then focuses on a person whose house was lost to foreclosure.

“Labor’s money provides them with the potential to make a significant impact in publicizing who Obama is, and it doesn’t really matter that it’s coming from the unions,” said Alan Gitelson, a political science professor at Loyola University of Chicago. “Political advertisements have an impact if they are repetitive.”

With the rolls of organized labor down nearly a quarter since 1979, union leaders will no doubt continue to hammer away.

The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation issued a news release announcing parallel federal lawsuits concerning illegal forced dues:

With free legal aid from the National Right to Work Foundation, three UPS employees in Kentucky and two UPS employees in Ohio filed federal lawsuits Friday and Monday, respectively, against national and local Teamsters officials for illegal extraction of forced union dues.

In the lawsuits, the nonmember employees claim that the national and local unions breached their duty of fair representation and violated the employees’ First and Fifth Amendment rights by charging and collecting fees used for organizing nonunion workers throughout the United States and financing a members-only “Strike and Defense Fund.” . . .

How is the AFL-CIO spending over $50 million in workers dues money? On political mailers, of course. National Journal reports that over 600,000 pieces are hitting mailboxes in four battleground states.

The AFL-CIO begins a ramped-up campaign to define Sen. Barack Obama with union members and their families in battleground states, focusing heavily on working-class, swing union voters in OH, MI, PA and WI. The goal, per union officials, is to dispel the many rumors circulating about Obama via two new mailers, dropped today, that ask and answer still-looming questions about the candidate. The union will send the pieces to 600K swing voters living in the four critical battleground states.

The mailers are just one leg to a very expensive political stool the union bosses are constructing.

Here are other elements of the AFL-CIO’s effort for Obama:

– The group’s focus is on mobilizing working people in 24 states, targeting about 13M union voters, including members, householders, retirees and those involved with the group’s community affiliate, Working America. Union voters make up between 25-35 percent of the vote on Election Day in OH, MI, PA and WI.

– In August, AFL-CIO volunteers will deliver 1M flyers about Obama’s record and background to worksites across the country. Overall, more than 4M flyers have already been distributed to worksites, including flyers about McCain’s “anti-worker” record, sources said.

– Every weekend in August, union volunteers will canvass neighborhoods across the country, providing voters with information about Obama’s record and contrasting it with McCain’s. Again, swing voters will be targeted. AFL-CIO volunteers will also be phone banking all month to swing union voters in key states.

– Members of Working America, the community affiliate of the AFL-CIO for those without a union, are canvassing nightly to discuss the issues that matter to working-class voters. In OH alone, more than 160 canvassers are going out every day. Working America currently has nearly 2.5M members, including 800K in Ohio.

– One note: The AFL-CIO Union Veterans Council, launched last month in five states, is expected to create new state councils expected in August. The Veterans Council will play an integral role in mobilizing 2.1M union veterans, according to union officials. Meanwhile, the TV ad about McCain’s economic priorities, featuring union veteran Jim Wasser, continues to run in media markets in six states: MI, MN, OH, PA, VA and WI. Also since February, AFL-CIO volunteers have now protested at more than 100 McCain campaign events from coast to coast.

In addition to the quarter of a billion dollars the AFL-CIO will spend to elect pro-Big Labor puppets across the nation, the Services Employees International Union (SEIU) will spend an incredible $75 million in forced-union-dues money between now and November.

The New York Times noted:

The union’s secretary-treasurer Anna Burger said the SEIU would devote money and staff to Colorado, North Carolina and Virginia. The union’s strategy appears to dovetail with the Obama campaign’s plans to compete in those states, all three of which President Bush won in 2004.

At a strategy briefing last week, campaign manager David Plouffe said “we think we’re in a very strong position” in North Carolina and Virginia and he indicated Mr. Obama would not be ceding the mountain West to Senator John McCain either. Mr. Obama chose the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs as the venue to talk up his national service agenda on Wednesday.

Ms. Burger said the union, which endorsed Senator Obama in February, would also pour resources for both the presidential contest and down-ballot races into the perennial battlegrounds of Iowa, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, among others, as well as governor’s races in Indiana, Missouri, North Carolina and Washington State.

To add insult to injury, the $75 million total does not include a $10 million bounty the union bosses have set aside to ensure that pro-Big Labor politicians don’t ever vote the interests of union members instead of the union leadership.

The National Institute for Labor Relations Research has announced the winners of its two annual essay contests on the Right to Work issue, the William B. Ruggles Journalism Scholarship and the Applegate/Jackson/Parks Future Teachers Scholarship.

Valerie Bischoff, currently a first-year graduate student at Columbia University School of the Arts, was awarded $2,000 as the 2008 recipient of the William B. Ruggles Journalism Scholarship. Majoring in Film Writing and Directing, Mrs. Bischoff is a 2006-2007 Fulbright Scholar, who has won several other awards including Honors in her undergraduate major, Film and Digital Media, at the University of Santa Cruz. Valerie’s essay reflected how the positive experience of living in a Right to Work state, Nevada, allows her to pursue her educational and career goals. As she concluded:

. . . [T]he right to unionize should be one of our fundamental freedoms. However, the validity of this right can only be realized if the members of the union are involved because of choice. Thankfully, in twenty-two states, a Right to Work law protects this freedom.

Lisa Bishara, beginning her first year as a graduate student at Ohio State University, took top honors in the Applegate/Jackson/Parks Future Teachers Scholarship. Mrs. Bishara was awarded $1,000 for her prize-winning essay on the vital importance of teachers’ academic freedom and the Right to Work. As an Elementary/Secondary Curriculum and Administration major, Mrs. Bishara plans to become a curriculum specialist with a defined emphasis on the creative arts. As she explained:

. . . We teach that everyone has choices in all that they do. Children are required to serve consequences for their poor choices, and are rewarded for their superior choices. We teach nonconformity, “If your friends jumped off the highest bridge, does that make it the right choice for you?” No, this is not an acceptable answer. We teach that it is important for the child to opt for traveling their own course regardless of that his or her peers take. How, then, are we to allow ourselves to be forced into compulsory unionization? It is important to support voluntary unionism, which emphasizes the importance of choice.

Fred Barnes, in The Weekly Standard, has an insightful take on the comparative economies of Right to Work state Alabama and forced-unionism state Ohio.

. . . When the U.S. Air Force awarded a $40 billion contract for 179 new aerial refueling tankers, Ohio wasn’t in the running as a site where the aircraft might be built. Instead, they’ll be built in Alabama outside Mobile.

Why? The answer is simple: Alabama’s business climate is good and Ohio’s isn’t. When major business projects are looking for the best site, job-hungry Ohio is rarely considered. And NAFTA has little or nothing to do with it. . . .

Ohio was once an economic powerhouse, but now it lags behind Alabama in almost everything that might lure new business to the state. “Ohio has raced past 41 other states and now ranks 5th in state and local taxes measured as a percentage of income,” David Hansen, president of the Buckeye Institute, wrote last year. Alabama, in contrast, ranks 46th in tax burden.

In economic competitiveness, Ohio has fallen to 47th in the nation, according to the American Legislative Exchange Council. Alabama is 18th. “The cost of doing business makes us very competitive,” says Bob Sisson, vice president of the Mobile Chamber of Commerce. Relative to Ohio, it certainly does. . . .

One more thing. Ohio is a highly unionized state. The Wall Street Journal called this “Ohio’s most crippling handicap” in job creation. Alabama is a right-to-work state in which union organizing is difficult.

This, of course, gives Alabama an important talking point. After all, other things being equal, would a large corporation prefer to locate a new factory in a union state or a right-to-work state? Would it rather hire a union workforce or a non-union one? Those questions answer themselves. . . .

The Wall Street Journal takes an insightful look into the economies of Texas and Ohio.

There’s no doubt times are tough in Ohio. The state has lost 200,000 manufacturing jobs since 2000, home foreclosures are soaring, and real family income is lower now than in 2000. Meanwhile, the Texas economy has boomed since 2004, with nearly twice the rate of new job creation as the rest of the nation.

According to the Wall Street Journal, free trade and lower taxes play a large role in the economic success of the Lone Star State, but labor policy, specifically Texas’ Right to Work Law, deserves most of the credit for job creation.

Ohio’s most crippling handicap may be that its politicians — and thus its employers — are still in the grip of such industrial unions as the United Auto Workers. Ohio is a “closed shop” state, which means workers can be forced to join a union whether they wish to or not. Many companies — especially foreign-owned — say they will not even consider such locations for new sites. States with “right to work” laws that make union organizing more difficult had twice the job growth of Ohio and other forced union states from 1995-2005, according to the National Institute for Labor Relations [Research].

On the other hand, Texas is a right to work state and has been adding jobs by the tens of thousands. Nearly 1,000 new plants have been built in Texas since 2005, from the likes of Microsoft, Samsung and Fujitsu. Foreign-owned companies supplied the state with 345,000 jobs. No wonder Texans don’t fear global competition the way some Presidential candidates do.

When Rep. Paul Gilmore died, the Governor set up a special election for his position on December 12 for the fifth congressional district. The race pits State Representative Bob Latta (R) against Robin Weiraugh (D). We weren’t surprised to see the officials of the AFL-CIO supporting Weiraugh, but it’s interesting to see her beg for Big Labor’s support in a YouTube video.

On tape, she asks for their money and tells them exactly what she needs them to do — down to the number of lines that need to be filled. Almost in the same breath, she goes on to promise support for their efforts to take away a worker’s right to vote on unionization by enacting the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill, and to forcefully oppose Right to Work, a bill which simply gives workers the right to join or support a union.

So much for the workers.