Forced-Unionism Statutes Suppress Job Growth in Many Business Sectors, Including Traditionally Union-Free Ones

Today apologists for compulsory union dues and fees often suggest that, because only a little more than seven percent of private-sector employees in the U.S. are covered by a union contract according to the most recent available data, there is no way monopolistic unions could significantly suppress job growth in jurisdictions where they are encouraged.

But as Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform explained for Human Events recently (see the link below), the damage pro-forced unionism labor laws do to employees and employers isn’t confined to sectors that are heavily unionized.

As Norquist pointed out, even though the financial sector is practically union-free in New York City as well as throughout the rest of the country, more and more financial companies are transferring their facilities and jobs out of the Big Apple and into Right to Work states.

A key reason is that the high taxes and burdensome regulations union bosses, especially government union bosses, in New York are successfully able to push for thanks largely to their forced-dues privileges are extremely harmful to financial businesses, as well as a wide range of other businesses that are rarely unionized.  Of course, high taxes are not helpful to unionized business, either.

Actually, as Norquist correct observed, it is easier for financial businesses to move their operations out of Big Labor-controlled, tax-hiking jurisdictions than it is to move blue-collar manufacturing jobs out of such jurisdictions:

The vast majority of people and income fleeing New York are leaving the city. The relative hollowing out of northern New York is a small fraction of those leaving Gotham city. And these financial numbers are net. They take into account that some people move into the state and city—but net more income is leaving the state and city than entering. And the population relative to other states is declining such that New York had 47 electoral votes in 1950 and only 29 today.

It is difficult to move a manufacturing plant or build a new automobile assembly line in South Carolina or Tennessee. It is less difficult to have the computerized, virtual world of banking, investment and finance move across city, state, and national lines.

Will New York City become the next Detroit?

After Big Labor-dominated New York City flirted with bankruptcy during Mayor Abe Beame’s tenure during the mid-1970’s, the financial boom of the 1980’s effectively restored the Big Apple’s fiscal stability. But even bull markets in stocks and bonds are unlikely to bring New York City, where government union bosses now wield perhaps more power than ever before, on the path back to a sustainable budget. (Image: New York Times)