Episode 12 — Right To Work

Robert Kahne

Published in

My Old Kentucky Podcast

4 min readNov 17, 2016

Right To Work

In 1935, the US Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act) as part of the New Deal. As a part of that law, unions and companies could agree to be one of four things:
Closed Shop: employees must be members of the union to be employed; if an employee’s union membership lapsed, they had to be fired.
Union Shop: non-union employees could be hired, but they must join the union within a certain time period.
Agency Shop: employees must pay pay dues, but did not need to join the union.
Open Shop: employees cannot be forced to join union or pay union dues.
Unions are required by law to represent all the employees in the “bargaining unit”, not just those who are members of the union. Unions have long pointed out that if members can receive the benefits of collective bargaining without paying for it, then they are “free riders”, and receive something for nothing.
In 1947, the Taft-Hartley Act was signed into law by President Truman. This law banned closed shop unions, and allowed states to outlaw union shops and agency shops within their jurisdictions. Since 1947, 26 states have implemented the “right-to-work” law, which outlaws those kinds of unions.
Kentucky has never implemented the right-to-work law, but five counties across the state have attempted to pass the law in 2015: Simpson, Fulton, Todd, Hardin, and Warren. These counties are mostly in the Bowling Green area.
In February, a federal judge overturned these laws, because sub-state governments were prevented in the Taft-Hartley Act from passing right-to-work laws.
The Kentucky State Senate has passed the Right To Work law several times, including as Senate Bill 1 in 2015. The Democratic-controlled house has never taken it up. It will certainly be passed into law during this year’s session.
When Right To Work was allowed in 1947, 12 states passed it: AZ, AR, GA, IA, NE, NC, ND, SD, TN, TX, FL and VA. All these states are in the South and West.
In the 50s-70s, it expanded to AL, KS, MS, NV, SC, UT, and WY
In the 80s, ID joined.
In the 2000s, OK joined.
Since 2012, the midwest has joined in: IN and MI joined in 2012, and WI joined in 2015, and WV joined in 2016.
Union membership has declined over time. Currently, 11% of Kentucky’s workforce is unionized. In 1964, the number was 25%. Kentucky has always had a high union membership rate compared to other southern states, and a comparable rate to WV and IN. Both IN and WV are right-to-work states as of very recently.
There are lots of policy studies on right-to-work, but very few that offer much evidence. States with right-to-work laws likely have many other laws that favor business over labor, and therefore it is hard to tease out the impact of right-to-work. However, the paper I like to use to form my opinion is a 2011 Economic Policy Institute study that suggested that right-to-work states have 3.2% lower wages, 2.6% less employer sponsored health insurance, and 4.8% fewer “pension points”.
Be very careful when reading or listening to ANYTHING regarding right to work — for or against. It’s very difficult to compare economies when there are so many factors.

REFERENCES

Quick hits

A Kentucky House recanvass!

http://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article114970793.html
Three candidates who lost their Kentucky house
Republican Denny Butler lost to newcomer McKenzie Cantrell (Louisville)
Denny Butler was one of two Dems who switched parties — 259 notes
Democrat Linda Belcher who lost to racist Dan Johnson (Bullitt)-156 votes
Republican Chad Shannon who lost to Democrat incumbent Rick Nelson (Middlesboro) — 420 votes
A recanvass hasn’t changed the outcome in Kentucky in over 30 years according to the Sec. of State’s office
Recount v. recanvass: A recanvass verifies accuracy of vote totals reported from each machine. A recount is recounting each individual vote, none of these candidates asked for a recount. If the candidates gain votes in a recanvass

Matt Bevin has raised over $300,000 since his election

http://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article114686313.html
When someone is elected to office, they typically close their campaign accounts and start governing. Matt Bevin didn’t!
He has still been having fundraising events since his election
This isn’t against Kentucky law. According to state law, a campaign committee does not have to be closed unless he wants to start campaigned for 2019. Then he would have to close his 2015 campaign committee and start anew.
Since winning election, he’s raised 325,000
Guessing this is to pay campaign debts. It could also be to repay himself for his million dollar loan

Mitch McConnell makes no promises for a coal revival

http://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article114197923.html
Donald Trump promised to bring back coal jobs. He made a big speech in West Virginia where he put on a helmet and pretended to shovel coal and he was bringing miners back!
Last Friday, Mitch McConnell didn’t really make a lot of promises or present any kind of plan
He said they would be presenting the president with several options that could end the war on coal but that it’d be hard to tell if that would immediately bring business back because it’s a private sector activity
One thing that would need to happen is ending Obama’s Clean Power Plan, which requires coal plants to use carbon capture technology
But the coal industry has greater problems than environmental regulations (like demand)
So there hasn’t really been a plan presented, but Mitch says a government spending plan probably isn’t the answer
Moving Confederate monument at UL to a historic civil war site in Brandenburg
John Yarmuth asked Trump to rescind the appointment of Steve Bannon.
Greg Stumbo had a press conference and said he doesn’t care what Matt Bevin thinks of him and he is going to go practice law in Prestonsburg

Episode 12 — Right To Work

Written by Robert Kahne