The Truth About Right to Work

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Proponents of right-to-work laws claim that states implementing right-to-work laws can have a higher amount of businesses in comparison to right-to-work states. According to a study conducted by Hofstra University’s Lonnie Stevans—associate professor emeritus of information systems & business analytics in the Frank G. Zarb school of business—in 2007, right-to-work laws helped boost the number of businesses in a state—but the gains mostly went to company owners. “Wages and personal income are both lower in right-to-work states, yet proprietors’ income is higher”. Stevans concludes that “Although right-to-work states may be more attractive to business, this does not necessarily translate into enhanced economic verve in the right-to-work state if there is little ‘trickle-down’ from business owners to the non-unionized workers”. Right-to-work states are very attractive to business owners due to its lack of union bargaining and employers benefit more by conducting their businesses in states where unions are weaker. They have much more flexibility in determining wages and compensation levels because they aren’t bound by disciplinary rules and procedures involved in bargaining agreements. This means employers have a much larger part in determining wages for their employees’. With weakened unions in the state, employees are not only prone to bad working conditions and unfair firing, they are naturally given lower wages and benefits because it would translate to more money in the pocket of employers. Right-to-work laws gives advantages only to employers and business owners, not to the employees.

This is unfair for both unionized and non-unionized states. Free-bargaining states keep losing jobs because employers prefer to move to right-to-work states due to cheap labor in those states leaving non-right-to-work states with less jobs. The increase of jobs in right-to-work states also affects the U.S. economy negatively because workers earn lower wages in right-to-work states. Right-to-work states have a significantly lower level of productivity than their non-right-to-work counterparts. Productivity measures how efficiently labor and capital, known as production input is used in an economy to produce output. Productivity is considered as a measurement of economic growth and the most widely used measure of productivity is Gross Domestic Product (GDP); which represents the amount of goods and services produced in a year. Data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis in 2009 showed that in the twenty-eight non-right-to-work states, the GDP per capita was $43,899 while the GDP for the twenty-two right-to-work states that year was $38,755. This data shows that non-right-to-work states are significantly more productive than right-to-work states.

Right-to-work laws would only weaken the freedom to bargain, lower wages and benefits, and prevent workers from being adequately represented. Such a law would undermine Washington’s economy and further shrink America’s middle class. According to an analysis by the PEW Charitable Trust, the percentage of “middle class” households—those making between sixty-seven to two hundred percent of the states’ median income—shrunk in all fifty states between 2000 and 2013. If Washington were to become a right-to-work state, it would contribute to the shrinking of middle class families in the United States because more of the states’ income would go to employers and less for the employees. Less employees would be able to be classified as middle class. With most right-to-work states in worse economic condition than non-right-to-work states, Washington should not risk limiting union bargaining and become a right-to-work state. There is no good reason why Washington should be the twenty-sixth right-to-work state in the United States. If what citizens and workers of Washington are seeking is fairness in their workplaces, right-to-work laws are certainly not the answer.