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Exposing the lies behind "Right to Work"

In a must-read report issued by the Economic Policy Institute this morning, arguments made by the Indiana Chamber of Commerce, American Legislative Exchange Council, National Right to Work Committee and other out-of-state and corporate special interest groups pushing for a so-called “right to work” law here in Indiana are taken to the woodshed. These groups have been playing fast and loose with the facts in an attempt to hide the political motivations behind "right to work" and distract our elected officials from working to create good jobs for Hoosier families.

According to the EPI's independent review, statements and materials distributed by interest groups to the Indiana General Assembly have supplied lawmakers with blatantly incomplete, outdated and twisted information.

Here are just a few of the tall-tales the being pushed by the anti-worker crowd that the EPI has dismantled:

• “The National Right to Work Committee issued a “factsheet” stating that job growth over the past decade was slower in Indiana than in the “Midwest” RTW states (National Institute for Labor Relations Research 2011). The factsheet does not disclose that the higher “average” for these states is due entirely to North Dakota, whose growth was sped up by the discovery of oil, which has nothing to do with RTW.3 Without North Dakota, the rest of the states averaged a net job loss”

• “If the National Right to Work Committee had focused on manufacturing instead of oil, it would have found that in the past two years Indiana added more than twice as many manufacturing jobs as all the Midwest RTW states combined. If businesses and workers are “voting with their feet,” they are voting for Indiana.”

• “The National Right to Work Committee also produced a Powerpoint presentation, Indiana and Right to Work, that quotes an executive of Fantus, a site-location firm, warning that approximately 50 percent of our clients … do not want to consider locations unless they are in right-to-work states” (National Right to Work Committee 2011). The committee neglects to mention that the quote is based on a report from 1975, and that by 1986, the firm’s executive vice president reported that the figure had fallen to 10 percent (Warren 1986).”

• “In its Rich States, Poor States report, the American Legislative Exchange Council promotes RTW by noting that RTW Texas has added more jobs in the past decade than any other state and declaring Texas “the state with the best policy to emulate” (Lafer et al. 2011, 13). What ALEC doesn’t tell readers is that for the last four years, the state’s job growth has come entirely through government jobs, while the private sector shrank—clearly a trend that cannot be credited to RTW (Fletcher 2011).”

• “In January, the Indiana Chamber of Commerce published a report claiming that from 1977 to 2008, per capita income grew at a faster rate in RTW states than non-RTW states and concluding that if Indiana adopted an RTW law, Hoosiers would enjoy similar income growth. What the Chamber failed to disclose is that, while the overall average of the 22 RTW states was impressive—led by fast-growing states such as North Dakota and Virginia—the actual state-by state numbers showed no relationship whatsoever between RTW laws and income growth. Four of the five fastest-growing states in the country were non-RTW states, and Indiana’s growth was 25 percent greater than that of its nearest RTW neighbor, Iowa (Vedder et al. 2011; Lafer 2011).”

Click here to read the entire report.

It’s alarming that groups like this are allowed to knowingly and willfully mislead our elected leaders with false information. In Congress, providing false information would be considered a crime, but Indiana has no such laws – maybe we should.

The truth is that these forces of greed will lie, cheat and even lock Hoosiers out of their own Statehouse in order to jam this very unpopular law down our throats because even they know it won't do anything but lower workers' wages and increase corporate profits.

2011 IAM Photo Contest Winners Announced

William Martin of NFFE-IAM Local 2109 in Watervliet, NY won first place in the 2011 IAM photo contest for his photo Eagle Eye that shows Kathleen Seeloff conducting a quality-control inspection of a 120mm mortar barrel. Contest winners’ photos will be featured in the 2012 IAM Calendar.

The results of the 2011 IAM Photo Contest are in and the winners are:

William Martin of NFFE-IAM Local 2109 in Watervliet, NY won first place for his photo Eagle Eye that shows Kathleen Seeloff conducting a quality-control inspection of a 120mm mortar barrel. Peter Ng of Local Lodge 764 in Richmond, BC, Canada, took second place with his photo Safe Start Engines showing Selim Turgut removing a ground power unit from a Dash 8 aircraft. Third place goes to Raymond Pfahler of Local Lodge 31 in Omaha, NE for his photograph Setting the Rotor that shows Gerry Munoz installing a high-pressure rotor into a turbine.

Honorable Mention winners include Frank Kammerer of Local Lodge 912; Terry Wasson of Local Lodge 898; John Keisler of Local Lodge 47; Jack Winslow of Local Lodge 174; Benjamin Castic of Local Lodge 41; Scott Orloff of Local Lodge 1725; Darcey Beyer of Local Lodge 1855; Larry Wilson of Local Lodge 733 and Kurt Hannemann of Local Lodge 78.

Winning photographs will be included in the 2012 IAM Calendar. Two dollars from each calendar sold are donated to Guide Dogs of America. Click here to download an individual order form. Lodges that want to order large quantities of calendars should click here for the bulk order form.

“Congratulations to the winners and thanks to all who participated,” said Communications Director Rick Sloan. “This is a great way to showcase the work our members do and to help a great cause, Guide Dogs of America.”

Click here to view the winning photos.

US Consumer markets, therefore demand for products are down because people are unable to buy as much. The obvious is the unemployed, those discouraged from looking for work that have dropped off the UE rolls and the underemployed who have taken jobs with lessor compensation to survive. Less obvious is the fact that as employers have had an overwhelming advantage in blocking unionization, the majority of Americans have taken a pay cut relative to productivity. If this isn't fixed the middle-class will continue to take it in the shorts, with the young getting the worst of it.

Employees at Boeing have always ensured the success of their employer. However, when Boeing made the decision to move production of the 787 Dreamliner to South Carolina they retaliated against their union represented employees in Washington State. Read More>>

Machinists Say A Vote for Trade Deals Could Trigger Primary Challenges

According to Matt McKinnon, the Legislative and Political Director for the International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers, members of Congress who vote in favor of the NAFTA-style “free” trade agreements this week could draw union-backed primary challenges in 2012.  We interviewed McKinnon earlier — starting about 9 minutes in — while covering the Occupy D.C. events.

While President Obama has spent weeks crisscrossing the country publicly promoting his American Jobs Act, ironically in Washington his administration has been focused on lobbying Congress to approve a package of job-killing free trade deals. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the NAFTA-style South Korea Free Trade deal could cost America roughly 159,000 jobs while Colombia would export another 54,000.

After Obama announced that he would be sending the trade deals to Congress and abandoning his promise to insist on passage of assistance to displaced workers before doing so, I spoke with McKinnon at the Freedom Plaza event in support of #OccupyWallStreet.

I asked if the Machinists considered these bills a line in the sand with members of Congress.   McKinnon responded, “I will not tell you it is a cross the board thing but what I will tell you is that we will pick and choose and there will be some primary challenges.”

He also had choice words for a Democratic Party that saw its future in embracing such deals:  “If they offshore our work to South Korea it will never come back, and I don’t know how they win elections in the Midwest.”

With over half a million members spread throughout the country, the IAMAW has the potential to be a real force in many Congressional districts if they do get involved in primaries. The 2012 election should be a relatively very favorable cycle to launch primary challenges against incumbent House members.  The current Congressional job approval rating is historically low, so there is little love for incumbents right now.

More importantly, redistricting is taking place this cycle. This means in some of the redrawn districts a significant number of voters will not have been previously represented by the current incumbent. A sitting House member may not have the same built-in name recognition and loyalty with voters that are added to a newly redrawn district.

McKinnon would not say which districts they would be looking at, but he noted that states like Washington and Pennsylvania were places where the union had tremendous organizing capacity, but many members of Congress had bad voting histories on trade and other labor issues.