With Indiana 'right to work' vote, a GOP thumb in the eye to unions

“If Republican candidates claim they want to increase jobs, they’ll now be likely to talk of having right-to-work laws to prevent job losses,” Chaison says. “They may now be emboldened and find they can gain political favor by opposing unions.”

The bill’s passage was hotly debated for almost a year. Last February, a five-week walkout by Democrats to Illinois prevented a vote, which was postponed to this year. Under Indiana law, a quorum is needed for every vote, whether it is a spending bill or not.

To prevent a vote, House Democrats, the minority party, several times refused to show up. They said public hearings were needed, so Indianans would be aware that the right-to-work bill was back on the legislative agenda. They later said they would return for a vote if an amendment were added to put the law to a voter referendum in November. The state Senate approved the bill Monday, without the referendum.

Oklahoma was the last state to pass a right-to-work law, in 2001. Data show that the state is not necessarily better positioned now to boost job growth, as many supporters claim. Since the right-to-work law went into effect there, the number of manufacturing businesses in Oklahoma fell by one-third and the state unemployment rate nearly doubled, according to a 2011 report by the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank in Washington that focuses on economic equity and labor issues. 

The reality is that a right-to-work law did not insulate Oklahoma from economic forces at play during the past decade, namely the outsourcing of jobs abroad, says Gordon Lafer, a political economist at the University of Oregon in Eugene who wrote the EPI report. Between 2001 and 2008, Oklahoma lost more than 20,000 jobs to China.

“In Oklahoma, claims that were made that [right to work] would boost manufacturing were proved totally false,” says Mr. Lafer. “Manufacturing is not down by a third because of right to work, but because [the legislation] is irrelevant in the modern globalized economy.”

Supporters of the right-to-work law say that, despite the economy's job losses during the Great Recession, worker productivity is up in the state. They also say the ultimate goal of the legislation is not necessarily economic, but rather to guarantee the individual liberty of workers by allowing them to decide whether or not to pay union membership dues.

“At the end of the day, this is a battle between union officials and independent-minded workers,” says Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Committee, an advocacy organization in Springfield, Va.

Many union workers do not approve of the politicking associated with organized labor, and they should have the right to withdraw their dues in protest, Mr. Mix says. That consequence will hold union leadership accountable for its actions.

“The reason union officials are scared of ‘right to work’ is they’re worried that if workers in Indiana have a choice to support them, some will choose not to,” he says.

Right-to-work critics say workers are already free to decide whether to join a union or not, and that they still have representation, if a contract dispute arises, even if they choose not to join.

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