(Source:  November-December 2011 National Right to Work Committee Newsletter)

Federal data on the American workforce and employment and unemployment rates show that, even with our country struggling through the most severe recession in decades and a so-far anemic recovery, employer demand for college-educated employees has continued to rise at a surprisingly rapid clip.

From 2000 to 2010, the total population of the U.S., aged 25 and over, grew by 12.1%, but the number of people in that age bracket with at least a bachelor’s degree grew by 29.3%.

And in October 2011, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the labor force participation rate for civilians aged 25 or older with one or more higher-education degrees was 76.4% (not seasonally adjusted), barely lower than it was before the recession started.

That same month, the nationwide unemployment rate for the pool of 47.3 million college-educated adults 25 or over was just 4.2%, well under half the average for the workforce as a whole.

The bottom-line significance of these data is that employers across the country typically have more difficulty finding a qualified college-educated person to fill a position than a college-educated person has finding a good job.

Of course, not everyone who holds a bachelor’s degree and is in the work force is doing well economically. But generally speaking there is still a “seller’s market” for college-educated labor in America today.

Furthermore, many businesses that sustain large numbers of jobs for people with associate’s degrees, high school diplomas, or less education also require a substantial number of college-educated people to operate smoothly.

Therefore, the rate at which a state is gaining college-educated people, relative to the national average, is in itself a good indication of how successful the state is in creating and retaining good jobs.

‘Highly Educated Employees, Like Other Employees, Benefit From Right to Work Laws’

The nine states with the highest percentage growth in their college-educated adult populations over the past decade (see the left column of the table accompanying this article) are located in the Southeastern, Southwestern, Plains, and Rocky Mountains regions of America. And they are culturally as well as regionally diverse.

What these states have in common is that they all have on the books Right to Work laws that make it illegal to force employees to join or pay dues or fees to an unwanted union as a condition of employment.

On the other hand, states without Right to Work protections for employees dominate the ranks of the laggards in increasing their college-educated populations (see the accompanying table’s right column).

Excluding the special case of Louisiana, which lost large numbers of college-educated and other residents after being devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, all of the nine worst performers were forced-dues states.

“The simple fact is, highly educated employees, like other employees, benefit from Right to Work laws,” noted Matthew Leen, vice president of the National Right to Work Committee.

“Employees of all kinds prefer to live in Right to Work states when they can because living costs are lower and real incomes are higher.”

Policymakers Should Pay Heed to Data

Mr. Leen elaborated: “For example, a study by Dr. Barry Poulson, past president of the North American Economics and Finance Association, found that the average household income in Right to Work states, adjusted for interstate differences in cost of living, was more than $4250 higher than the average in forced-unionism states.

“The fact that real household incomes have over the years repeatedly been shown to be higher in Right to Work states than in non-Right to Work states is no coincidence.

“Where forced union dues are legal, union bosses use their power to disrupt labor markets, jack up costs, and bankroll Tax & Spend, regulation-happy state legislators and governors.

“The data clearly show forced-unionism states seeking a ‘brain gain’ should pass Right to Work laws. Policymakers should pay heed.”

DCI asked corporate executives and representatives to name the three states they thought provided the “most favorable business climates,” and the three states least favorable to business. Texas ranked #1 in the final survey results, while California ranked dead last at #50.

DCI provided this commentary on the results:

• Common themes of low operating costs and a pro-business environment emerge for the top five [original emphasis]. Positive responses emphasized costs, low taxes and incentive offerings, while negative opinions cited high taxes, anti-business climates and fiscal problems/state deficits.
• Here are the top five states, in order: Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Florida.
• Here are the bottom five states, starting with with the worst ranked: California, New York, Illinois, New Jersey, Michigan.

The Top Five

The Bottom Five

Indiana has already blown its chance to move to the top five next year, but New Hampshire, Missouri, and Maine still have the opportunity to turn their migration around.

For the seventh year in a row, a survey of chief executives has ranked California as the nation’s worst state in which to do business.

More than 500 U.S. CEOs polled by Greenwich, Conn.-based Chief Executive magazine based their opinions on numerous factors, including regulations, tax policies, work force quality, education resources, quality of living and infrastructure.

While the Golden State came out on the bottom, Texas topped the magazine’s “Best & Worst States” list for the seventh consecutive time.

Texas was followed, in order, by North Carolina, Florida, Tennessee and Georgia.

Ranking 46th through 49th in the rankings were Michigan, New Jersey, Illinois and New York, respectively.

See more details in Friday’s edition of The Sacramento Bee.

Even though reality continues to fly in the face of Big Labor propagandists in Washington and in college academe like the University of Missouri’s Judy Ancel, there remain politicians from the President on down who continue use ever means possible, other than allowing people to choose whether or not to pay to a union, compel union membership onto people against their will. The NLRB v. Boeing (Case No. 19-CA-32431) case is just a recent example.

Bondi signed off on a letter sent by Attorney General Alan Wilson of South Carolina to Solomon which maintained that the NLRB’s complain was without merit and demanded he withdraw it.

“This complaint represents an assault upon the constitutional right of free speech, and the ability of our states to create jobs and recruit industry,” the attorneys general wrote. “Your ill-conceived retaliatory action seeks to destroy our citizens’ right to work.

“Our states are struggling to emerge from one of the worst economic collapses since the Depression,” they continued. “Your complaint further impairs an economic recovery. Intrusion by the federal bureaucracy on behalf of unions will not create a single new job or put one unemployed person back to work.

“The only justification for the NRLB’s unprecedented retaliatory action is to aid union survival,” they concluded. “Your action seriously undermines our citizens’ right to work as well as their ability to compete globally. Therefore, as attorneys general, we will protect our citizens from union bullying and federal coercion. We thus call upon you to cease this attack on our right to work, our states’ economies and our jobs.”

From Matt Mayer’s post:

“With Michigan bleeding jobs and tax revenues, Granholm said she followed the corporate playbook in her attempt to close a huge state budget deficit and make Michigan more competitive. ‘In listening to the business community, I cut takes [sic] 99 times, and I ended shrinking government more than any state in the nation. In my two terms, I cut more by far than any state in the nation. And yet, we still have the highest unemployment rate.

There was no correlation.’ Granholm conceded that streamlining business regulations and lowering taxes — Kasich’s economic recovery mantra — are helpful, but they aren’t a panacea…[l]abor costs, help with start-up costs and proximity to markets are other factors.”

Hallett and Governor Granholm fail to mention why streamlining regulations and lowering taxes aren’t helping the northern states (located within 50 percent of the U.S. population and with low start-up costs) compete against the southern and western states. Instead, Hallett ignores the obvious answer and pleads for an end to corporate pork (with which we enthusiastically agree).

The reason Michigan and Ohio can’t compete is that the southern and western states already have fewer regulations and lower taxes, so “catching up” with those states still leaves the proverbial elephant in the room weighing down the northern states. Plus, those states are also pushing for lower taxes and fewer regulations, so the northern states are perpetually behind them. The elephant, which Governor Granholm does hint at, is labor costs, or, more specifically, unionized labor costs (see: General Motors and the United Auto Workers).

As I noted in Six Principles for Fixing Ohio, “Of course, tax and regulatory burdens also impact a state’s economy. Although many of the forced unionization states have heavy tax burdens and many of the worker freedom states have light tax burdens, some heavily taxed worker freedom states (Idaho, Nevada, and Utah) had the strongest sustained job growth from 1990 to today.

Similarly, a few moderately taxed forced unionization states still had weak job growth (Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri). The combination of both a heavy tax burden and forced unionization is deadly when it comes to job growth, as 11 of the 15 worst performing states are ranked in the top 20 for high tax burdens.” If Ohio and the other states from Missouri to Maine want to truly compete with Texas, Georgia, and South Carolina, then those states need to enact laws that protect the rights of workers not to join a labor union to get a job.

After all, depending on the National Labor Relations Board to protect unions from competing is not a long-term strategy for success; rather, it is a short-term finger in the dike as the flood of worker freedoms washes over the dike. The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ data over the last twenty-one years shows why Right to Work laws result in more jobs.

From 1990 to 2011, states that protected the freedom of workers not to join a union to get a job netted 10,742,600 jobs — even after the massive housing and construction job losses in states like Nevada, Florida, and Arizona — as forced unionization states (including Ohio) netted just 6,715,500 jobs.

Keep in mind that the vastly superior net job growth in worker freedom states was done despite having nearly 60,000,000 fewer residents! Over twenty-one years, forced unionization states had private sector job growth change of just 11 percent compared to 34 percent in worker freedom states.

The following are a few quotes from news reports related to the Castor event:

ABC Action News: “The rude behavior and those tactics of disruption are not going to help people pay their medical bills,” Castor said.

 Redstate.com: “SEIU members were given reserved seating that took up at least half of the 250 seats.”

Rush Limbaugh (available with subscription):  “RUSH: We have Beth and Jerry from Tampa, Florida.  They are on two phones in their home, and they were at the Kathy Castor town hall meeting last night where the SEIU people showed up and there was a lot of thuggery going on.  Welcome to the program.  What can you tell us?  

BETH:  Well, I guess I’ll start first because I’m the chatty one.  

BETH:  Well, we had waited an hour in line and we were right at the doors where you are going in and they had the doors open into the union hall, into the meeting room.  And they had a speaker outside but it wasn’t working.  And people in the hallway were yelling, “Let us hear,” and they thought we were saying, “We want Obama,” but it was “Let us hear.”  And they couldn’t get the speaker to work.  So we’re all standing there.  Well, people outside were going, “Open meeting! Open meeting! Take it outside,” so everybody could hear because there were so many people there. Well, they decided too much noise was going on in the hallway and decided to close the doors.  Well, somehow I got pushed into the room, into the meeting room when the thugs came out.  They came out four abreast with their arms up.  I got pushed in, and my husband, who was right behind me in the green shirt, then was pushed against the wall.  My daughter managed to get over to him to try and get them off of my husband.  

BETH:  Right.  At any rate, when they had my husband pinned against the wall, I was going hysterical.  We went to ask specific questions on health care.  I have read the bill.  There was no addressing of any questions.  I was in the meeting hall after they shut the doors.  I did not leave because I wanted to hear what was said.  

RUSH:  Yeah. From the video I saw, Kathy Castor just tried to make speech.  She wasn’t entertaining any questions and people were standing up and disagreeing when she said various things, correct? 

Angela Leitzel works as a field technician for Verizon in Tampa, Florida. Because Florida is one of 22 Right to Work states, Leitzel may not be compelled to pay any union dues, although she must accept unwanted “representation” of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 824 union bosses.

In February, Verizon assembled a team of Florida-based technicians, including Leitzel, for a work assignment in California out of a facility “represented” by Communication Workers of America (CWA) Local 9588 and affiliates CWA International and CWA District 9. On February 17, Verizon removed Leitzel from the project, and a company representative informed her that she could not work on the project, because she was not a member of IBEW Local 824.

On March 9, Leitzel was again barred from another team going to California to perform work for Verizon. The company informed her that CWA officials would not permit her to work at the California facility because she was not a member of IBEW Local 824.

With free legal aid from the National Right to Work Foundation, Leitzel filed unfair labor practice charges against Verizon and the unions. Federal labor law forbids employers to discriminate against employees on the basis of non-membership in a union. Moreover, CWA officials committed unfair labor practices by encouraging Verizon to discriminate against her and failing to inform her of her rights in California, which has no Right to Work law, to refrain from union membership and pay reduced fees, rights established in the Foundation-won U.S. Supreme Court precedent CWA v. Beck (1988).

The NLRB Regional Director in Tampa agreed with the charges and threatened to issue a complaint against the unions and the company, so they sought to settle the case to avoid a costly and embarrassing legal battle. The settlement guarantees Leitzel full compensation for lost income related to her removal from work, and the company and unions agreed to cease all illegal discrimination on account of union affiliation. A notice to be posted at Verizon workplaces in Tampa and Bradenton, Florida, and in Rancho Cucamonga, San Bernardino, and San Fernando, California, will inform other Verizon employees that such union discrimination is illegal.

“California should take a lesson from Florida: no employee should ever be forced to join or pay fees to an unwanted union,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “The only way to eliminate collusion between Big Business and Big Labor to discriminate against independent-minded employees is to eliminate forced unionism altogether.”

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.

There is a great reason why the economy in the right-to-work states of the South has been so robust and the Rust Belt states, like Michigan, have experienced unemployment rates in double digits. It is because of the secret ballot, the exchange of ideas and workers freely choosing to be paid competitively based on merit.

Forming a union should be a basic freedom in the workplace. On that, I agree with Nissen.

Here is where we part company: That decision should also be personal and private — a decision not made under false pretenses, coercion and threats by either side.