Forced-Unionism Apologists Can’t Get Their Story Straight

Even Some Big Labor Allies in Academia, Media Admit That Right to Work States Have Superior Long-Term ‘Output and Income’ Growth

“[I]t is true that both output and income have grown faster in right-to-work states than in other states over the last decade . . . .†“[T]he decision to move production to anti-union [Right to Work] states has become . . . commonplace . . . .†“[O]ne important force [behind the decline of private-sector unionization] is the flight of companies to ‘right-to-work’ states where workers cannot be required to join a union.â€

In Indiana, New Hampshire, and other states where citizens who want to protect employees’ personal freedom of choice and promote economic growth are fighting to pass Right to Work laws, Big Labor and its friends often claim that such laws, in the words of pro-forced unionism Indiana economics professor Marty Wolfson, “aren’t likely to be a factor for companies deciding where to locate within the United States.â€

Inconveniently for Dr. Wolfson and other forced-unionism apologists who make similar claims, a number of their ideological allies are less dismissive of the facts than they are. Three examples are the anti-Right to Work authors of the statements quoted two paragraphs above, all made this year and all contradicting Dr. Wolfson. They are, respectively, John Miller, an economics professor at Wheaton College in Illinois, Washington Post economics pundit Steven Pearlstein, and the editors of the New York Times editorial page.

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