"The welfare of humanity is always the alibi of tyrants" - Albert Camus

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Update On Rep. Sherman's Madness

About a couple of weeks ago, I blogged about the California congressman who has introduced a bill to eliminate right-to-work laws in the 22 business friendly states that have them.  These laws let workers employed at organized companies choose for themselves if they're going to join the union or pay union dues. In the 28 states without right-to-work laws, workers are forced to join the union if their employer has been organized.

If even-higher unemployment is his goal, he has the right idea.

Look at the data cited by Greg Schneider, a senior fellow with the Kansas Policy Institute and an associate professor of history at Emporia State University, in the Daily Caller. From 1999 to 2009, right-to-work states added 1.5 million private-sector jobs, a 3.7% increase. Over the same period, states that don't have right-to-work laws lost 1.8 million jobs, a 2.3% decline.

Growth was even stronger in the right-to-work states from 1995 to 2005. Over that stretch, private-sector jobs grew by 20.2%.

Maybe Sherman reckons that if California can't keep up with fast-growing right-to-work states such as Texas, he can punish those states and maybe bring some of the lost jobs back to California.

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