The Indiana Chamber of Commerce dominated the “Right To Work” debate in Indiana until last Thursday, when The Higgins Labor Study Program at the University of Notre Dame had the temerity to weigh in: (pdf)
Empirically, the argument that RTW laws will, in the long run, lead to higher wages is not accurate either. Since the Taft-Hartley Act was passed in 1947, and since 18 of the 22 RTW states had passed RTW laws by 1955, the long run should have already arrived. But the evidence indicates, as
noted above (Gould and Shierholz, 2011), that wages and benefits today are lower for union and non-union workers in RTW states than in non-RTW states. If the Chamber’s argument seems familiar, it is because it is the same “trickle-down” approach that has been used repeatedly in the past thirty years.
And here’s the Indiana Chambers response:
(INDIANAPOLIS) — Dr. Richard Vedder, an Ohio University economist and principal author of the recent Indiana Chamber of Commerce-released study, Right-to-Work and Indiana’s Economic Future, comments on the latest union-backed attack of his work:
“The ‘analysis’ released today from the Higgins Labor Studies Program at the University of Notre Dame is not surprising considering that supporting unions is actually spelled out as part of the program’s mission statement.
“The Higgins response to the Indiana Chamber’s right-to-work study is embarrassingly weak. It offers no new research to refute our study, but rather uses lame arguments, such as the claim that per capita income is an inappropriate measure. Much of the work we incorporated into the Indiana study was published in a refereed academic journal – something that cannot be said for the Higgins effort.”
Vedder also pens editorials promoting RTW in Ohio newspapers, which makes him a fair and neutral arbiter, unlike those union thugs at Notre Dame. You can read Vedders RTW study at the Chamber link, where you’ll find that the Chamber sponsored the study.
Vedder and the Indiana Chamber are concerned that a labor-backed university program had a seat at the table in what had been, up until last Thursday, a completely one-sided debate.
Conservatives and libertarians are running a con. They’re insisting they’re not after private sector unions, because private sector union members split their votes between Republicans and Democrats. Union votes are important to conservatives and libertarians in states like Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Indiana. But off course they are hostile to private sector union members. They’re pushing RTW, hard. Those two positions are incompatible, and require an explanation.
Daniels, Kasich and Walker should be asked their position on RTW and private sector unions. I’d say “get it in writing” but we just found out in Ohio that conservatives will happily pledge to support unions in writing, and then renege after they’re elected. Mitch Daniels adroitly dodged the private sector union question when he realized pursuing RTW was politically problematic right now, due to conservative over-reach on public sector unions in Ohio and Wisconsin. He shouldn’t get away with that.
ant
So is per capita income is an inappropriate measure?
Or not?
BGinCHI
That this whole debate is framed around legislation called “right to work” is a good index of how much of an uphill climb this is going to be for collective bargaining and workers in general.
It would help to change the discourse first.
“right to work” = right to work for lousy wages and terrible benefits
cleek
that is, of course, the goal of RTW.
BGinCHI
I’d also remind people — and I wish the media would do this, since it ain’t that hard — that when Walker puts forward a union-busting bill, he IS negotiating with public sector workers. It’s not about negotiations. It is a negotiation.
His opening gambit is scorched earth.
kay
@ant:
You’ll have to read both. The Notrde Dame study claims that Vedder cherry-picked his data carefully. They’re wondering why he didn’t use long-range data on RTW, because (as quoted above) it’s been available since the 1950’s.
11 southern states have been RTW since the 1940’s. It’s not like we don’t have numbers.
Southern Beale
Last week the Economic Policy Institute issued its report, Does Right To Work Create Jobs? Answers from Oklahoma
The whole report is interesting but this from their summary:
I just would love for this kind of information to get out there. Have these guys booked on some of the bobblehead shows and get interviewed and get their op-eds published. I’m SO FUCKING TIRED of constantly getting shouted down by the Chamber of Commerce assholes. When do we get to push back? WHEN?
Dennis SGMM
“You have the right to work. We have the right to pay you as little as possible. And, by the way, you’re all considered managers now so don’t even think about asking for overtime pay.”
kay
@BGinCHI:
The private sector union member protesters in Indiana use “right to work for less”.
It just bothers me that Kasich and Christie and others are running around pledging fealty to private sector unions.
It looks like a pure political strategy to retain those voters in eastern and industrial midwest states. I’d like some clarity on the conservative-libertarian view on private sector unions, because Vedder has some really radical views. He objects to every labor law passed since 1930.
BGinCHI
@kay: The problem of course is that many union folks, especially those in private unions, vote for people like Daniels/Kasich/Christie because of issues that have nothing to do with labor. Social and religious issues, for example.
What the current overreach by Walker, and, I hope in time, Kasich, is doing is allowing people to take a more holistic view of what these guys are up to.
Let’s put this differently: take all the “right to work” states and then show their ranks in education, health, and all the quality of life measurements.
ant
@kay:
OK. I’ll take a look into it. It’s just that I saw you attack this Vedder guy for being a shill, but didn’t deconstruct any of his arguments.
Usually, I find the latter more compelling.
kay
@BGinCHI:
I’ve mentioned a lot that I live in one of those “right wing union voters” areas, and I would dispute that it’s social issues. IMO (and this is, of course, anecdotal) it’s just general disinterest until it affects them directly. Unionized law enforcement weren’t voting on abortion. They were voting because they had what amounted to an informal agreement that GOP pols wouldn’t gut their wages or privatize their jobs.
It was safe to vote for GWB is you were UAW in Ohio. He didn’t do anything directly to hurt or harm them.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Facts have a well known liberal bias. But the LEOs (aka idiots) don’t love Kasich in OH, do they? That can help, but is it enough?
kay
@ant:
That’s not what I wrote. I wrote that Vedder and the Chamber objected to the labor-backed program at ND when Vedder is backed by the Chamber, and his study was reviewed by CATO.
The Chamber don’t refute any of the ND study arguments. They simply state over and over that the ND program is backed by labor.
It’s ridiculous. They widely disseminated a study commissioned by the chamber and reviewed by CATO (WSJ, FOX both relied on it), and then whine that ND released a study backed by labor.
They don’t want a debate. They want to issue directives.
Dennis SGMM
I’m not going to give the Indiana CoC a click. Can anyone tell me the name of the “refereed academic journal” that published Vedder’s opus?
BGinCHI
@kay: I didn’t mean abortion (though for Catholic union folks, and there are lots in midwestern urban areas, that’s a chunk), but more along the lines of general soft conservative stuff. Like pro-military and guns, tough guy talk, and so on. Not strict issue-based voting.
I think we’re in agreement here. I certainly do agree that working class folks can be passive about politics until it hits home, which is why the WI stuff is so important regionally and nationally. I come from a firefighter background (father and grandfather) and what’s great in WI and elsewhere is to see teachers and firefighters/cops standing together. They often don’t, locally (they compete for funds and there’s a class cold war).
kay
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
The spin is just incredible, though,isn’t it? I feel as if national media are portraying Kasich as “a moderate” because they’re comparing his approach to the lunatic in Wisconsin.
But the issues are the same. Kasich was able to run roughshod because Democrats couldn’t deny a quorum. That’s the one and only difference. Kasich actually pioneered locking the statehouse. He was first with that.
BGinCHI
@Dennis SGMM: If it’s the CATO journal that would be hilarious.
Peer-reviewed by other glibs.
Anyone know?
Martin
The use of quotes around analysis is one of those ad-hominem attacks that perfectly correlates with extreme dickishness. Stopped reading at that point. It was obvious what was coming next.
Yutsano
@Martin: Half a Cavuto mark is definitely a big tell here.
kay
@BGinCHI:
Absolutely. It’s interesting for me, because this has long been a point of debate and gnashing of teeth here locally, among Democrats and (active) union members.
I will never forget passing out Kerry handouts outside a UAW plant here locally, in the 2004 election.
I knew many were voting for Bush. There was this sheepishness, almost an apologetic air when I engaged them. I could feel it :)
BGinCHI
@kay: Kay, what do the big OH newspapers have to say about this? Which way do they lean?
The Chicago Trib, for example, is cheerleading this shit as loudly as they can, and while I would never touch it with a ten foot pole, I know the Indy Star will be too.
BGinCHI
@kay: Unfortunately, that’s how my people did politics.
The “who’d you rather have a beer with?” phenom goes really far in working class, low info places.
Makes me mad as hell.
kay
@Dennis SGMM:
This is from the FOX link:
A recent report in the libertarian Cato Institute’s Cato Journal written by Ohio University economics Prof. Richard Vedder found that about 4.7 million Americans moved to right-to-work states between 2000 and 2008.
I’m going to give you this, too, because it’s more of his work in the CATO Journal. This one is absolutely alarming. It begins with how state law limits economic freedom. That’s PRE federal labor law. He’s got problems with any labor law, of any kind, ever.
Martin
@BGinCHI: The free market will purchase the most accurate articles, obviously.
BGinCHI
@kay: It’s telling if it’s an inside CATO journal job.
Look, as an academic, I can tell you that there is a difference between refereed and non-refereed. But, it’s pretty simple to point out that if you define “refereed” as “judged by an interested, non-objective group of peers,” you aren’t living up to the spirit of a refereed journal.
It’s an echo chamber, in other words.
What a shock.
His response to the ND folks is especially pathetic and I bet they laughed when they read that charge. The devils will be in the data here and won’t be hard for smart folks to sort out.
ppcli
I thought I had seen all possible shameless rhetorical dodges, but props to Ohio University economist Dr. Richard Vedder for coming up with one that was new to me. Someone objects to your work that it cherry-picks data and it ignores multiple well-known studies that are familiar to everyone in the field? Response:
“It offers no new research to refute our study”
I’ll have to remember that the next time that a referee points out that, say, the claims in my paper are inconsistent with the existence of gravity, or the ideal gas law.
Kyle
We need to spread the meme Cheap Labor Republicans. Because that is the essence of their efforts — tilting the field against labor and toward business. Like trickle-down, any promise of long-term benefits for anyone but business is propaganda.
If you earn a living through your labor, you’d be nuts to support the Repukes.
kay
@BGinCHI:
Just roughly, I would say northern Ohio papers are neutral/pro-labor (The Toledo Blade). The Columbus paper backs Kasich no matter what he does, and southern Ohio is conservative. I don’t read the Cleveland or Youngstown papers, so I don’t know about NE.
I started looking at Michigan papers last week, because they have a Tea partier gov, and they’re wary, to say the least.
Yesterday, the Michigan GOP voted to pull same sex benefits, under the guise of “budget constraints”
kay
@BGinCHI:
I read both, and the ND paper is interesting, because it has a section on social justice and unions, within religion. I’m glad that’s coming back into the discussion, if it is, and the noise machine doesn’t just drown it out.
Dennis SGMM
@BGinCHI: @kay:
Thank you both. Seems to me that characterizing the Cato Journal as “academic” is like characterizing WWE as Greco-Roman wrestling.
UmYeah
@kay:
Divide and conquer.
Public sector union jobs have a much harder time being shipped elsewhere.
For those in the private they know they can threaten to ship jobs to China or Dumblefuck,Alabama.
Pangloss
Plus, he put “analysis” in quotes, which, you know, casts doubt on its accuracy.
BGinCHI
@kay: Thanks, Kay, for both responses.
Good post and an excellent discussion.
If you have time, I’d suggest an email to the ND folks alerting them to the thread and asking if they have comments on the controversy and/or details on the research and methodology questions.
aimai
This right to work wheeze is like the laffer curve, or trickle down. Its one thing to push for the grinding poverty for all that makes oligarchy really worth living. Its another to try to sell it to the rubes as some sort of get rich quick scheme for the average person. Why can’t they just be honest and tell all of us to curl up and die already? Instead we are forced to watch these fake academics and the paid mouthpieces of crony capitalism explain to us, condescendingly and with graphs, that if we just forget reality we will all be rich!
aimai
burnspbesq
Odd how so many people who are so quick to label the Catholic Church as a useless and evil institution are equally quick to embrace research done at a Catholic university.
Morbo
“Analysis” in scare quotes, aw, that’s cute.
Dennis SGMM
@burnspbesq:
That might be because the research was done by academics rather than by priests.
Southern Beale
@kay:
Yup. I remember being at a visibility event for Kerry in 2004 and amid the thumbs-up and horn-honkers was always the “get a job!!” asshole and I remember one being a union guy — we could tell from a bumper sticker. I remember my friend in his lovely Southern way shouting at him: “And you’re a UNION MAN! Shame on you!”
Ah well. Same as it ever was.
RSA
This doesn’t sound very scholarly. (Is that the biggest insult an academic can receive? If not, it’s probably close.) It’s full of weaseling. The Higgins report questions the methods and analysis of the Vedder work, and it doesn’t seem lame on the surface. For example, if you’re studying right-to-work laws, it makes sense to look at the incomes of people who are most affected by changes to right-to-work laws, rather than everyone including CEOs. And the business about “much of the work” being published (but does the work address the points the Higgins report raises?) and a “refereed academic journal” (Please. As Kay indicates, the Cato article is the only reference to Vedder’s work in the Indiana Chamber study).
Dennis SGMM
@RSA:
I always thought that the Gold Standard for academic work was not just publication, but peer review as well. Although I’m just guessing, I’d say that Vedder will submit his work to peer review around the same time that the Winter Olympics are staged in Hell.
BGinCHI
@burnspbesq: Not everyone who teaches there is Catholic, or even religious.
This isn’t about religious affiliation.
Nice try though.
Brachiator
What immediately comes to mind is that ancient Sanskrit text…
The Rigged Vedder
@UmYeah:
Sadly, this is not the case (Costa Mesa to lay off nearly half of city workforce, outsource services)
Dennis SGMM
@Brachiator:
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Caz
You shouldn’t lump conservatives and libertarians in together – they have distinctly different views on these issues. While their proposed actions may sometimes intersect (as I suppose democrats and libertarians do as well), that does not mean they are approaching the analysis in the same manner. There are usually distinctly different reasons why a libertarian would do something and why a conservative would do the same thing.
Dennis SGMM
@Caz:
I’d say that they lumped themselves together on this one.
Chuck Butcher
I thought I knew this guy’s name:
He’s a real piece of work
The “Austrian Economics Newsletter” lays claim to him as well:
jwb
@Caz: libertarians fuck us over on principle; economic conservatives fuck us over because they can; wingnuts fuck us over because they enjoy it; David Brooks fucks us over because someone has to suffer and he’s going to make damn sure it isn’t him. Yes, I’m sure that each species of conservative has a different reason for fucking us over.
Chuck Butcher
@Caz:
Really? IGMFU isn’t a GOP plank?
The Republic of Stupidness
Don’t know if they have unions in India or not, but apparently Indian workers tend to take things into their own hands when they get laid off…
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
@BGinCHI: Or better yet “right to work” means “no right to work”
ETA: It’s funny how Vedder pints out a potential conflict of interest in the Notre Dame study but fails to note the conflict of interest in his (who paid for the study).
Cacti
Also worth noting that NAFTA decimated manufacturing in “right to work states”, when Mexican labor was found to be cheaper still than non-unionized American labor.
burnspbesq
@Dennis SGMM:
And all the indigent care provided for free at Catholic hospitals is provided by doctors and nurses, not priests. So?
Call me when you have a real point to make.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
It sounds like they outsourced them to local companies, not overseas or to a RTW state, which I think is what UmYeah was saying. Costa Mesa can’t move its garbage collection to South Carolina or decide that all of its fires are going to be put out from a call center in India. You still need actual people to provide those services in the city.
Of course, I can pretty much guarantee you that this outsourcing is going to cost the city far more than keeping the employees on the city payroll would have, but that’s because firing public workers has more to do with ideology than cost savings. It’s more important to break the union than it is to save money, but saving money sounds really nice to taxpayers, and they don’t notice that the savings never arrive.
aimai
@burnspbesq:
Well, you might think that the fact that people on the board have great respect for people who do their jobs well, regardless of their presumed religious affiliation, means that when they criticize specific Catholic individuals or institutions for specific acts or crimes that they *aren’t in fact being anti Catholic.* So instead of getting on your high horse every time a poster criticizes some Catholics for some acts you might just relax and stop being so defensive.
aimai
Cacti
@burnspbesq:
Always looking for an out for the child rapists, aren’t you?
So, how many child rapists were involved with the study in question?
Mike G
@The Republic of Stupidness:
Fired workers burn Indian executive to death
Now THAT’s class warfare…
BGinCHI
@Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people): Feature, not a bug.
I’d like to make these guys eat inconvenient pages of the New Testament one page at a time.
RSA
@Dennis SGMM:
Oh, yeah. I believe that Cato is peer-reviewed, and I don’t know much about public policy journals, but I was suggesting (not very clearly, though) that an economic analysis would have more credibility if it appeared in an economics journal rather than a free-market libertarian public policy journal.
BGinCHI
@Mike G: It’s a “right to burn management” state.
Lesley
From http://robertreich.org/post/3638565075
Kyle
@Mnemosyne:
Careful, or a Republican who wants to “run government like a business” will actually try this.
I used to work for an IT contractor who has since outsourced all server support to Indians who cannot speak or understand spoken English. If you have an issue you have to type it on the screen (they can just barely read English but not understand speech) while they remote in.
Lesley
From http://robertreich.org/post/3638565075
Had to remove the paragraph breaks to make blockquote work.
Brachiator
@Dennis SGMM:
Sorry. I’ve be re-watching episodes of Rocky and Bullwinkle. A regular punfest.
@Mnemosyne:
The companies may not necessarily be local, or even US companies (consider all the various “place of incorporation” games that could be played). So the outsourcing could end up siphoning revenue out of California even if there are local jobs. And either way, public employees get shafted.
You’re right that the cost savings may not really be there, although you can pretty much guarantee that wages paid will be lower, which is a shame. Also, some of these jobs involve jail administration. There may be the potential here for some incredible civil rights violations by private security firms.
gnomedad
I’ll point it out again: Milton Friedman opposed right-to-work laws in Capitalism and Freedom; don’t know if he ever walked it back.
Dennis SGMM
@Kyle:
I was a machinist for many years. When the industry collapsed because of outsourcing no one bothered to stand up for it. Instead, it was “That’s what you get for working with your hands,” and “We don’t want those jobs anyway, we want the cool, high tech jobs.” I paid for my own training and moved into IT. That held up long enough for me to retire when the wave of outsourcing hit that profession. Some of my friends who still work in HR have told me that HR is being outsourced as well. At this point, I’d say that any white collar worker who feels that their job is secure is whistling past the graveyard.
timb
@BGinCHI: That’s silly. There’s no newspaper in Indianapolis. Trust me, I live here. Ain’t been a paper round these parts since Gannett bought out the Pulliams in aught 2.
timb
@burnspbesq: If the academics used the Bible for their labor research, then they’d be as silly and stupid as the rest of the Church. Just because there’s accidental knowledge created at a place which takes money from the Church, doesn’t mean it is completely tainted by the Church’s bullshit.
BGinCHI
@timb: I wouldn’t wipe my ass with the Star.
And I’m being charitable.
timb
@BGinCHI: Which is why no one reads it anymore.
Seriously, I get my new from Doghouse Riley and the rest of this blighted city (new motto: still SLIGHTLY better than Detroit) gets it from Rush Limabugh and Mitch Daniels’s press secretary.
It’s why no one around here knows what IBM is and why the sort of person who thought of giving them TANF administration should be recalled and not be allowed to ask to do for America what he did for Indiana
nancydarling
Thanks, Kay for this post. Good information to refute the opinions of the “upper classes” here in Arkansas. I notice that on page 10 of the Higgins report, Arkansas is third from the bottom for median household incomes for 2009—just above West Virginia and Mississippi.
BGinCHI
@timb: Guy I went to Purdue with was one of Mitch’s chief staffers. Total asshole.
Other some Lockerbie area bars and people in pockets trying really hard to make some culture, Indy ain’t one of my favorite places.
ckc (not kc)
…peer-reviewed
..hmm – you know that “peer” is debatable, popular usage notwithstanding?
Ruckus
@Dennis SGMM:
Bingo!
Ruckus
@Dennis SGMM:
A nice big THIS!
El Cid
The role of newspaper writers and journalists in pushing “right to work” policies cannot be overestimated.
The phrase was popularized (“created”) by Dallas Morning News columnist William Ruggles in 1941.
So all you union types producing all our goods for World War II, fuck off & die.
Anyway:
A “closed shop” is different than one requiring either an employee join the union when hired (or by paying the same dues). With the former you’re only to hire union members.
Taft-Hartley outlawed the closed shop in ’47, “right to work” states banned any requirement that new hires join the union or pay its dues.
So, effectively, pretty much no reason to form or join.
Thus, the attraction of businesses to the South. Once again. In the late 1800s, the South became the Northern industrialists’ 3rd world non-union manufacturing area to get away from higher wage and more protected union labor.
In passing the RTW laws, Southern states guaranteed they would retain the low wage, low protection environment we all know and love.
The Ruggles fans run the “National Right to Work Committee,” and a legal foundation, and a scholarship, etc.
On their blog, they cheer for Michelle Malkin who’s showing what’s what to those teacher union “agitators” in Wisconsin. Or to “Big Government” for exposing how firefighter thugs sent a nasty e-mail. Or how Maine’s governor is really the man for shoving it to the unions with another “Right To Work” state.
Origuy
@BGinCHI: My sister works at the Indy Art Center; she’s one of the ones trying to make culture. They live in a subdivision near Brownsburg. The Obama sign in their yard kinda stood out.
Hey! WP finally stopped flagging Obama as a misspelling! When did that happen?
TheF79
After a quick readthrough of the Notre Dame study, it seems pretty solid conceptually. Basically they’re doing a regression discontinuity design with adoptance of RTW as their quasi-natural experiment, and then looking at growth before and after. This helps control for other cross-sectional variation and is pretty SOP. I would have liked to see more formal modeling, but perhaps I just missed a link to another paper where that was done.
Vedder is simply running cross-sectional analysis on a small sample and basically hoping he can control for every variable that might be correllated with RTW and influence his dependent variable. Given the sophistication of econometric modeling in the labor economics field, there would have been a snowball’s chance in hell of Vedder’s paper being accepted in a proper economics journal. Vedder’s piece in Cato is like a well-written, first-year PhD student’s final paper for an econometrics course. Praying that you capture all sources of cross-sectional variation with 5 control variables is not an identification strategy.