Michigan became the 24th state to have a so-called right to work law Wednesday. What the law does is prohibit the closed shop, a union contract with an employer which requires every worker to be a dues-paying union member. Kansas has had the law for decades.
Nationally, states with the anti-closed shop law have lower average union wages than those without it. The difference is about $1,500 a year. In part, at least, that is because the law weakens labor unions. The business owners and others in Michigan who favored the law believe it will make Michigan more attractive to businesses and industries and result in more job creation. It is possible that some industries will move there or start up there because of the law. Lower wages are an attraction.
Michigan should expect no flood of new employers, however. As was mentioned, Kansas and 23 other states have the law. Businesses seeking locations with weak unions can take their pick. At this point in the game, right-to-work laws are so prevalent that business location decisions are made for other reasons. Labor union stalwarts argue that strong unions make strong industries because they produce more stable, more loyal work forces with higher skill levels. They also point out that strong unions do some worker discipline which is beneficial to management.
That said, it must be added that the shift Michigan made this week is likely to last. If any state which passed a right to work law repealed it later, a brief effort at research did not discover it. To my knowledge, there has been no movement in Kansas to go back to the days of closed union shops.
In a way, that’s a little surprising given the fact that middle class wages and benefits have been steadily declining in real terms for the past 30-40 years. Those declines were caused by other factors, as well, globalization being the most dominant. The weakening of unions, however, played an important part in the diminished status of the nation’s factory and trade workers.
At the end of World War II, returning veterans jumped at the chance to work for a railroad, General Motors, U.S. Steel or General Electric. Line jobs at those organized plants paid as well as many jobs that required a college education and seemed more secure. Those days are long past and won’t return.
Nevertheless, our society should strive to find a way for the middle class worker, the men and women who form the great majority of our population, to again be paid good benefits and wages high enough to cover basic needs and a little more, save for retirement and live in comfort — incomes that a great many American adults earned producing the nation’s manufactured goods and moving those goods to market just a generation ago.
To be as good as we were 40 years ago doesn’t seem too ambitious a goal for the world’s wealthiest nation to seek.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
