Morning Wire - Michigan Reverses “Right to Work” Rules | 3.3.24

Episode Date: March 3, 2024

Michigan is threatening its economic prosperity by reversing “right to work” laws and forcing employees to embrace union membership. Get the facts first on Morning Wire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Michigan is the first state in at least 60 years to go from being a right-to-work state to being a forced union state. And that's a very sad development for workers for the country and the state of Michigan. While other states have embraced the right to work no longer forcing employees to join unions, Michigan has now reversed course, requiring all workers to pay union dues and fees. In this episode, we talked to an economics expert about the impact of Michigan's decision to no longer be a right to work. work state. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley. It's March 3rd, and this is a Sunday edition of Morning Wire. Here to discuss Michigan's right-to-work reversal is Stephen Moore, distinguished fellow in economics at the Heritage Foundation. Stephen, thanks for joining us.

Thank you. It's a pleasure to be with you. Now, there's been a movement away from unions and toward, quote, right-to-work in most states across the U.S. over the past couple of decades, but Michigan notably is going in the opposite direction. Why is that? Yeah, so what's happened is we now have roughly 26 states that are right-to-work states, mostly in the red states of the south and the mountain states and some of the Midwestern states. It's not an anti-union initiative. It just basically gives every worker the freedom to choose, whether they want to be in the union or not. I think that's something that's misunderstood about right-to-work. It doesn't outlaw unions. The Northeast is pretty much a,

forced union reached into the country. And what's sad is that Michigan, about a decade ago, became a right to work state, and that led to a lot of economic development of state because a lot of businesses won't build a factory or a research facility in a state that forces people to join the union. And so Michigan, because the Democrats, took over control of that state, both of the governorship and the legislature, the lawmakers and Lansing overturned the right to law and now have returned to forced unionism. Now, in your piece on hot air, you went as far as to say this is a corrupt deal with politicians. What did you mean by that?

Well, it's just corrupt in the sense that this isn't not about whether you should have a union. It's whether or not you should require to people to be in a union. And basically what happened is the union bosses are the ones who donated huge amounts of money to the coffers of the state legislators. and the governor to get them to overturn this law. And it's a shame because the biggest loser here are going to be the workers of Michigan. We have very strong evidence that states that are right to work

have much lower unemployment rates, much higher job growth. In fact, job growth is double the rate in states that have right to work laws than states that don't. And so I worry that Michigan is going to return to being a rust-selt state as a lot of factories and jobs lead the state now that they become a forced union state.

When you say that right-to-work states create more jobs, what kind of data do we have on that? Well, the evidence is overwhelming and incontrovertible. In fact, over the last 10 or 20 or 30 or 40 years, whatever period you want to look at, states that have right-to-work laws are creating about twice the number of jobs than states that are forced union states. So it makes no sense from a job point of view

and an economic development point of view to force people to join unions. And that's why there's a movement to get a lot more states to become right-to-work states. And we think, you know, there's six or seven more that could become right-to-work. And it's advantageous for the local economy. It's advantageous for bringing development into the state, and it means more jobs for the workers in the state. So now, you know, the opponents of right-to-work would say, well, the wages are going to be lower. But actually, you know, if you're high-performing,

worker, there's a lot of reasons why somebody might not want to join the union. You don't want to be under a fixed pay scale if you're one of the highest performing workers. You want to be able to negotiate your own salary, not the salary that the unions have negotiated for you. In your article, you talked a little bit about the historical context surrounding Michigan's industrial decline. What happened to Michigan to take it from a booming economy to where it is now? Well, you know, you go back 100 years or so, and really, obviously, Michigan is famous for being the birthplace of the automobile and the assembly lines that Henry Ford masterminded and turned Michigan to the Motown. And for many, many, many decades, Michigan was a very prosperous state because you had so many industrial jobs in Michigan. And then what happened over the period from the 60s, 70s and early 80s is that a lot of those factories,

left Michigan for a lot of reasons, not just because of the forced union laws, but also because taxes were high and there were a lot of anti-business policies in place. And, you know, what's really interesting is that over the last 30 or 40 years, the United States has not lost auto jobs. It's just the auto jobs have left Michigan, and they've left some of those Midwestern states. And now if you go to the southern states that are right to work states, you're going to find a lot of auto, you know, booming auto factories in Charleston, South Carolina, many parts of Texas, in Florida, in Alabama. Those states are overflowing with auto jobs as they've moved out of Michigan.

What about the Janus v. AFSCME verdict at the Supreme Court that came down in 2018? What affected that decision have on states and unions? Well, that was a really important case because that was the case that basically said, unions cannot force workers to pay union dues for political activities they don't agree with. And that's just a basic right to free speech case. If you don't agree with the political position of the union, why should you have to pay for advertisements? For example, you know, Donald Trump is doing very well with blue-collar unionized workers.

He cleans up with those voters. And that's one of the reasons he may win Michigan this November. But on the other hand, the labor bosses are all bought paid for. by the Democrats. And so it's a classic case where the union bosses who control the money are using union dues to help elect people that the rank and file members don't want to see elected. And so that Janice case said workers can opt out of having to pay for those political contributions that they disagree with. And one more question. How important of an issue is this to the average voter in Michigan? Is this something that people are tracking closely? Or is this more of a

back burner issue that affects people, but they don't necessarily make that connection when they're at the ballot box? Well, here's the really important thing to understand about unions. Never before in American history have so few workers worked for unions. Only about five or six percent of all Americans are in unions. And in fact, in the private sector, it's an even smaller percentage. So unions are really not very important in the grand scheme of things in terms of the jobs that people hold. And in fact, we've seen this declining ratio of workers in unions over the last 50 or 60 years, and it continues to decline. So unions have a lot of political power, but they don't have a lot of economic power. And so this is why, you know, the unions are making kind of a last gasp here

to try to force people to join the union because, you know, here's the most important thing. When I ask people about right to work and people argue against it, I simply say this, if unions are so good for workers, then why do you have to force the people against their will to join the union? I mean, if it's in their interest, they should want to join the unions. The reason that these states are passing forced union rules is to require the workers to join the union whether they want to or not. And I think we should be a country that gives every worker the freedom to choose. I'm not saying we should be against unions, but we should be against forcing people to join a union if they don't want to. All right. Well, Stephen, thank you so much for coming on.

to do it anytime. Take care. That was Stephen Moore, Distinguished Fellow in Economics at the Heritage Foundation. And this has been a Sunday edition of Morning Wire.