Right to Work Wins Again

Development Counselors International (DCI) ranked the top five and the bottom five states, in terms of what states provide an economic climate most favorable to business. The rankings show that states following right-to-work laws held the top five spots, while states following more union-friendly rules held the bottom five spots.

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. (more…)

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.

Matt Mayer of the Buckeye Institute debunks the long-term economic growth without Right To Work freedom is sustainable. Mayer uses a Columbus Dispatch reporter Joe Hatlett column that featured Former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm to expose the fact that corporate welfare and reduced regulations ignore the “proverbial elephant in the room weighing down” compulsory union states like Indiana, Ohio, Illinois,, and Michigan.

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. (more…)

Attention Atlanta Taxpayers

Hold on your your wallets if you are a taxpayer in Atlanta.  The union bosses are demanding their due.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution’s Steve Visser reports that big labor expects big favors from new mayor Kasim Reed. Local union boss Charlie Flemming says “we did a lot of work and we spent a lot of our resources” supporting Reed. It should be noted that it wasn’t Flemming’s resources but worker’s dues money that was spent but that is another story. Flemming is demanding that Reed pay them back with kickback and favoritism.

In the book, Stranglehold, Reed Larson reveals the astonishing story of how organized labor has acquired incredible, hidden power over local, state, and national governments in America. For a free copy of Stranglehold, go here.

The Augusta Chronicle joins the growing opposition to the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill, S.560, pointing out that Georgia House of  Representatives member John Barrow is refusing to protect workers rights.

Ten Governors Oppose Card Check Scam

In a letter to Congress, 10 governors voiced objections to imposition of the Card Check Scam (i.e. the so-called Employee Free Choice Act) on their states.

The letter states:

January 8, 2009

Dear Senator Reid, Senator McConnell, Speaker Pelosi, and Representative Boehner,

The “Employee Free Choice Act” is a highly controversial federal bill which seeks to fundamentally alter federal labor laws that run counter to long held traditions that have protected the privacy and security of American workers. We believe that America must maintain and encourage a competitive workforce. To keep America competitive, the federal government must protect the confidential nature of a worker’s vote. Some of the Act’s primary flaws include:

— Violating the elections process that allows employees to choose whether they want union representation through a secret ballot. Currently, neither the union nor the employer knows how an employee votes. The proposed legislation would eliminate this important protection for employees — one supported by a recent poll that showed 75% of Americans believe that a free and impartial secret ballot election is the fairest way for workers to decide on union membership.

— Imposing Contract Terms on Employers which are not actually requested by their workers. The National Labor Relations Board will be de facto authorized to force an employer to implement a collective bargaining agreement imposed by an arbitrator rather than through the long held tradition of unions working independently on an agreement between the employer and employees in order to secure their top priorities. Instead this bill will allow far removed union executives to insert their own priorities without prior consultation with the affected workers. This represents an unprecedented government intrusion on the right to bargain freely over working terms and conditions.

We respectfully request that you join us in opposing this legislation and cast your vote against it.

Sincerely,

Gov. Sonny Perdue,
Georgia

Gov. Bobby Jindal,
Louisiana

Gov. Tim Pawlenty,
Minnesota

Gov. Haley Barbour,
Mississippi

Gov. Jim Gibbons,
Nevada

Gov. John Hoeven,
North Dakota

Gov. Mark Sanford,
South Carolina

Gov. Mike Rounds,
South Dakota

Gov. Rick Perry,
Texas

Gov. Jim Douglas,
Vermont

Free Choice Act is Anything But

James Walters and Matthew Simpson respond to the boss of Georgia’s AFL-CIO and his call for passage of the Card Check Scam Bill.

Waters and Simpson get right to the point: The centerpiece of the Act is the elimination of government-run secret ballot union elections. And by stripping employees of the fundamental right to cast a private vote for or against union representation, the Employee Free Choice Act undermines the very principles of a free and democratic society, and only robs employees of their vital “freedom to choose.”

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Posted in: Card Check, Georgia

Ballot is Huge

Newspapers from across the nation continue to urge Congress to fight the Big Labor power grab known as the Card Check Scam Bill. The Augusta Chronicle believes that a Pro-Big Labor Senate with a 60 vote super-majority should send shivers down your spine:

George Orwell is turning over in his grave. But if you live in Georgia, you can put a stop to it.

The so-called “Employee Free Choice Act,” is as Orwellian a name for any law we’ve ever seen. The proposed law before Congress, in fact, is not about free choice at all; rather, it seeks to restrict the free choice of those who don’t want to join a union, in a most underhanded way.

Democrats love the law for what it will do for their bread-and-butter Big Labor friends: It will take away employees’ right to a secret ballot when voting on whether to form a union.

Democrats and union bosses know that public votes on unions will put crushing pressure on intimidated workers to vote in favor of forming or joining unions.

And what kind of reprisals might the workers risk if they vote against the union?

This is precisely what Big Labor bosses are demanding as payback from the large Democratic congressional majority that they helped get elected.

The “card check” law, as it’s called, provides yet another reason why it’s critical to re-elect Republican Saxby Chambliss to Georgia’s U.S. Senate seat.

Chambliss won the most votes in the Nov. 4 election, but just not enough to avoid a runoff on Dec. 2.

Now, with Democrats closing in on a possible 60-vote advatnage [sic] in the U.S. Senate — enough to end debate on bills and proceed to a vote — the Chambliss race has become one of the most-watched, most important elections in the country. In one of the most important election years in our lifetimes.

Chambliss may be all that stands in the way of Democrats gaining a filibuster-proof Senate majority — and their virtually certain approval of “card check.”

Here’s how it would work: Under current labor rules, if you are approached by a couple of burly, threatening-looking 200-pound guys asking you to sign a petition to establish a union shop at your place of work — and you are opposed to the idea — you can smile nicely and sign the petition, safe in the knowledge that you can vote against the union in the privacy of the voting booth. But under card check, you wouldn’t get a chance to cast a secret ballot. The petition would empower labor bosses to form a union shop if more than 50 percent of workers signed on.

What could be more un-democratic than abolishing the secret ballot? That’s what they do in dictatorships.

Union bosses claim that secret ballot elections are unfair because of management coercion and intimidation. This is simply not true. Government investigations have uncovered no evidence of widespread management abuse. And workers themselves say they have no problem with the National Labor Relations Board’s oversight of union elections.

Even more significant are polls showing that more than 70 percent of both union and non-union workers favor the secret ballot over card check. Moreover, coercion and intimidation is more likely to come from Big Labor’s thuggery than anything management does.

The misnamed Employee Free Choice Act is nothing more than Democrats paying off labor bosses — special interest legislation at its worst.

And didn’t President-elect Barack Obama promise he’d put an end to the clout of special interest lobbyists? Don’t count on it; he was for card check when he was in the Senate.

The re-election of U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss on Dec. 2 would greatly enhance the chance that Republicans could mount a successful filibuster against card check.

It’s not card check that the nation will need over the next few years, but a check against a left-wing Congress run amok. You can be sure Chambliss will help provide that check. His opponent would only add to it.