opinion

Right to work is bad for workers' wages

Stan Greer recently provided an argument in support of proposed Right to Work (RTW) legislation in Missouri which relied on weak anecdotal data to try to indicate RTW is good for workers. Perhaps more importantly, Greer avoided referring to more comprehensive research which indicates definitively that RTW legislation is bad for workers’ wages.

In 2015, Gould & Kimball from the Economic Policy Institute completed a rigorous analysis which compared the wages of workers in all RTW and non-RTW states. Their unadjusted findings indicated that wages are 15.8 percent higher in non-RTW states. But even after controlling for other variables that impact wage differences, including demographics, full-time status, industry/occupation mix in each state, unemployment rates and cost of living, their study revealed that wages are 3.1 percent higher in non-RTW states.

Some critics object that this study hides the impact of wage-boosting manufacturing jobs which RTW legislation may attract, a claim not supported by the data. Gould & Kimball find that RTW legislation doesn’t even appear in the top 10 location decision factors in national business surveys. They note that these surveys suggest businesses are primarily drawn to states with “strong education systems, strong research universities, good digital infrastructure, and other features that are predominantly found in fair-share, not RTW, states.”

As it happens, these are all weak spots for Missouri. Beyond data, Greer suggests that workers in unionized workplaces in non-RTW states are unfairly charged dues for services they don’t want. Interestingly, in RTW states the opposite is actually true: workers must receive, by law, higher union negotiated wages, benefits and grievance support, for which they are not obligated to pay dues.

Without dues, union efforts to improve the lives of workers are undermined. There are policies to improve the lives of workers in Missouri, but RTW is not among them.