LET SCOTT WALKER WALK THE WALK ON RIGHT TO WORK- A DETOUR ON THE WAY TO IOWA
http://www.wsj.com/articles/scott-walker-and-right-to-work-1421107031
Scott Walker and Right to Work
Wisconsin’s Governor bobs and weaves on another labor reform.
Scott Walker is heading to Iowa this month as part of his consideration of a run for the White House, but in the meantime he’s starting a second term as Governor in which he presumably wants to accomplish something. So it’s unfortunate that he’s ducking a chance to make Wisconsin the country’s 25th right-to-work state.
At his second inauguration last week, Mr. Walker told voters that prosperity comes “from empowering people to control their own lives and their own destinies through the dignity born from work.” In the Badger State, he added, “we understand people create jobs, not the government.”
He’s right, which makes it that much stranger to watch Mr. Walker dodging the right-to-work challenge. In December, after Wisconsin Senate majority leader Scott Fitzgerald said he was interested in taking up a right-to-work bill, the Governor called it a “distraction.” Then he told WKOW-TV “Capitol City Sunday” that despite the chatter about right-to-work momentum, “there’s a lot of things that are going to keep the legislature preoccupied for a while,” like taxes and education.
That may be, but Wisconsin needs an economic lift and right to work can help. Big Labor spins right to work as radical, but it merely gives workers a choice to join a union. Many workers decide to drop their union affiliation once government coercion is repealed, and union political clout tends to fall.
In Wisconsin the government union rolls fell after Mr. Walker’s courageous first-term reforms broke the union monopoly on collective bargaining. By 2013 government union membership had fallen to 138,124 from 187,064 in 2011, according to numbers from Georgia State University and the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
With the exception of tax-and-union-dominated Illinois, Wisconsin has lagged its fellow Great Lakes states in GDP growth. It grew a mere 1% in 2012 and 1.7% in 2013, according to the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the Great Lakes region, only Illinois did worse in 2013 at 0.9%. Wisconsin ranked 27th among states in GDP growth in 2013, while Michigan (2% growth) was 21st and Indiana 19th (2.1%).
The Badger State is still recovering from the two-term tax-and-regulate legacy of former Gov. Jim Doyle. It needs lower business and individual tax rates, but right to work can also help at the margin. For many companies, right to work has become almost a threshold issue when it comes to investment decisions.
That’s the main reason Michigan Republicans used their control over state government to take the right-to-work leap. From March 2013 when its law took effect through November 2014, the state saw 4% payroll manufacturing job growth, beating an average of 2.8% in right-to-work states and 0.9% in non-right-to-work states, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Indiana joined the right-to-work ranks in 2012, and from March 2012 to November 2014 factory payroll employment grew 9.4% compared to 1.2% average growth for states without right-to-work laws. Right to work isn’t the only reason those states have done relatively well, but it hasn’t hurt.
Mr. Walker’s reluctance on right to work may reflect a desire not to take on one more brawl with Big Labor as he contemplates a presidential run—as if Rich Trumka of the AFL-CIO would loathe the Republican any less. If Mr. Walker has bigger economic reforms on his mind, he should make them known and explain why they’re more important than right to work. If he doesn’t, then he’s missing a rare opportunity to press right to work while the GOP has comfortable majorities in the state legislature.
Mr. Walker’s labor reforms were a big help in his re-election, and his opponent didn’t run on repealing them. The reason his race was close is because the state’s economic growth continues to be subpar. Mr. Walker became a national GOP figure because he was willing to spend his political capital on a fiscal and political reform worth the effort. If he misses that chance in his second term, he may find that his presidential campaign becomes merely a distraction.
Comments are closed.
