Opinion

JACKSON: Kamala’s Promise To End Right-To-Work Would Make Every State Like California

Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

Kerry Jackson Contributor
Font Size:

Democratic presidential candidate and California Sen. Kamala Harris has said that if she’s elected, she would issue an executive order to rescind hard-won worker freedom.

Maybe it’s a “California value” to support conscripted unionism. But before Harris’ position becomes too hardened to walk back, she should consider how reforms would benefit workers in her home state.

At a recent union event in Las Vegas, Harris said part of the job of being president is “to speak up about the needs and the rights of workers,” and their ability “to organize and fight for their rights … It has to be about banning right-to-work laws.”

Forget for the moment that Harris has been tagged as an authoritarian for, in the words of Kristin Tate, promising to use “executive powers to ban state laws just because she doesn’t like them.” For now, let’s focus on what it would mean for California workers if this were a right-to-work state.

In right-to-work states, workers can decide for themselves if they want to join a union or remain independent. In 22 states, including California, workers are forced to join unions, or at least pay union dues, when their employers use organized labor.

Liberating workers is one of the great advantages of right-to-work arrangements. For instance, they are not compelled to support unions, and their political activities. Workers have the power to take back control of their paycheck when they find little value from the union or disagree with its positions.

In addition to securing workers’ freedom, right-to-work laws also elevate employment opportunities. According to NERA Consulting Group, private-sector employment grew by 27 percent in right-to-work states between 2001 and 2016, but only 15 percent in states that didn’t have them.

At the same time, annual unemployment rates in right-to-work states was 0.4 percentage points lower than in states that don’t protect workplace freedom.

“In concrete terms,” says NERA, “if non-right-to-work states had had the same unemployment rate as right-to-work states in 2017, approximately 249,000 more people would have been employed.”

Economic output was also higher in states where workers are free to choose. That meant personal income was higher, as well, better by 13 percentage points — 39 percent versus 26 percent — over non-right-to-work states between 2001 and 2016, says NERA.

In Michigan, a traditional union stronghold, accelerated wage increases followed enactment of right-to-work legislation. From 2012, when lawmakers voted to secure workplace freedom, until the middle of 2015, incomes rose 9 percent faster than the national average.

Both findings invalidate opponents’ argument that workers are harmed by these laws because they drive down wages.

The NERA report also tells us that businesses prefer to locate in right-to-work states. This should be of special interest to policymakers in a state where businesses are fleeing its grinding tax-and-regulation regime in alarmingly large numbers.

It’s no coincidence that states with the best climate for small business have right-to-work laws. The data show that worker freedom laws are accompanied by economic dynamism.

States that have enacted right-to-work laws, according to Pacific Research Institute Senior Fellow Wayne Winegarden, grow faster than the states that haven’t. “The forced unionization that occurs without right-to-work laws significantly raises cost for businesses.”

“Passing a right-to-work law in California” should be at the top of any regulatory reform agenda in California, because it “will make the state more attractive to businesses leading to an increase in investment,” Winegarden added.

Greater investment will then “translate into more jobs and higher incomes.”

In some sense, all states are now right-to-work states for public employees, thanks to the Supreme Court’s Janus decision, in which a 5-4 majority said that that government workers are not required to pay unions to keep their jobs. It has the potential to be a historic ruling, severely weakening private-sector unions as workers who have been shackled to organized labor realize they can be free agents.

To no one’s surprise, California lawmakers have been rushing to undermine Janus. Such a poisoned political environment sharply decreases the odds that right-to-work legislation would even get a fair hearing in Sacramento, much less a floor vote in one of the chambers. Harris would never have to worry about her home state challenging her administration if she used the power of the White House to roll back workplace freedom.

Kerry Jackson is a fellow with the Center for California Reform at the Pacific Research Institute, a nonprofit group advocating for limited government.


 The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel