Low Union-Monopoly States Furnish ‘Safety Valve’ For Americans Aged 25-34 Who Can’t Find Decent Job Opportunities in High Union-Monopoly States, Census Bureau Data Show

The newly published 2010 edition of the U.S. Census Bureau’s Statistical Abstract of the United States shows that, in 2008, there were 40.932 million U.S. residents aged 25-34 living in one of the 50 states or Washington, D.C. That represents a 5.6% increase over the total 25-34 year-old population in 1998. In absolute terms, the U.S. population in this age bracket increased by 2.158 million over the past decade.

The overall U.S. population from 1998 to 2008 increased by 12.5%, well over double the growth rate for the young-adult population. The relatively slow growth in the number of 25-34 year-olds is widely recognized as a significant impediment to economic growth because of the group’s high participation in the labor force. Among males aged 25-34, 92.2% had jobs or were seeking them in 2007, compared to just 73.2% of all males 16 and over. Among females in the 25-34 age bracket, 74.5% were labor-force participants, compared to 59.3% of all women 16 and over.

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On February 26, 2010 the National Institute for Labor Relations Research received, as a donation, documents partially fulfilling a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that had been made by the National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation to the United States Department of Energy. The documents consist of all non-career employees’ EO 13490 Ethics Pledges and Waivers, including all PAS and Schedule-C appointees.

The Institute now has the FOIA documents on file at its headquarters in Springfield, Va., and will make then available upon request to anyone who wishes to review them. The Institute may be contacted by phone at 703-321-9606 or through the mail at the following address:

National Institute for Labor Relations Research
5211 Port Royal Road, Suite 510
Springfield, Va. 22151

Relentless Growth of Government Payrolls Is Good News For Union Bosses, But Will State and Local Taxpayers Keep Picking up the Tab?

In mid-December, two of America’s best known labor economists, Drs. Barry Hirsch and David Macpherson, released their analysis of Current Population Survey (CPS) data for the first 11 months of 2009, indicating strongly that last year, for the first time ever, a majority of unionized workers across America were government employees.

Today Big Government, not the private sector, is Big Labor’s bread and butter. That’s why union bosses unabashedly push for higher taxes and bigger government, and seem unconcerned that the policies they advocate will surely slash overall private-sector job growth in future years.

And this winter, Congress appears poised to enact legislation that would fuel even faster growth of monopoly unionism in government employment. The so-called “Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act” (H.R. 413/S. 1611) is detrimental to the interests of private employees and businesses, indeed, of everyone who pays taxes.

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On January 5, 2010 the National Institute for Labor Relations Research received, as a donation, documents partially fulfilling a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that had been made by the National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation to the United States Department of Defense. The documents concern information pertaining to congressional military travel requests by Congress, dating from December 2006 through December 2008.

The Institute now has the FOIA documents on file at its headquarters in Springfield, Va., and will make them available upon request to anyone who wishes to review them. The Institute may be contacted by phone at 703-321-9606 or through the mail at the following address:

National Institute for Labor Relations Research
5211 Port Royal Road, Suite 510
Springfield, Va. 22151

On December 10 the National Institute for Labor Relations Research received, as a donation, documents partially fulfilling a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request that had been made by the National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation to the New York State Department of Labor. The documents concern a controversial program initiated by New York State Labor Commissioner Patricia Smith, President Obama’s nominee for solicitor of the U.S. Labor Department. The program effectively deputizes officers of labor unions and labor union front organizations to enforce state laws governing hours and wages. The potential for conflicts of interest and other abuses in such a program is, of course, enormous.

The Institute now has the FOIL documents on file at its headquarters in Springfield, Va., and will make them available upon request to anyone who wishes to review them. The Institute may be contacted by phone at 703-321-9606 or through the mail at the following address:

National Institute for Labor Relations Research
5211 Port Royal Road, Suite 510
Springfield, Va. 22151

Since 2000, a Net Total of 1.63 Million Federal Tax Filers Have Escaped to Right to Work States

Early this year, economist Mark Perry posted a table (which had originally appeared in the National Right to Work Newsletter) on his heavily trafficked Carpe Diem blog showing that the eight states enjoying the greatest net in-migration of people from other states between 2000-2008 all have Right to Work laws. The table also showed that, of the eight states suffering the worst out-migration, only Katrina-ravaged Louisiana has such a law.

Right to Work laws protect employees from federal policies authorizing the termination of workers for refusal to pay dues or fees to an unwanted union. To most Carpe Diem readers, the table undoubtedly furnished compelling evidence that the 22 Right to Work states as a group offer a far better climate for jobs and businesses than do the 28 states that do not protect employees from forced unionism.

However, additional data collected by the federal government make the case for Right to Work’s economic benefits even more compelling.

Specifically, the IRS tracks and makes available data that enable researchers to calculate how much income, on average, personal income tax filers who move to a Right to Work state take in the first year after they move.

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High-Unionization States Are Suffering a ‘Lost Decade,’ But, Even With Recent Setbacks, Low-Unionization States Have Gained Nearly 1.5 Million Private-Sector Jobs Since Last Recession

Early this month, BusinessWeek Economics Editor Michael Mandel bemoaned the fact that U.S. private-sector employment is currently lower than it was in the trough of the last nationwide recession. Citing preliminary August 2009 data for the nation as a whole, Dr. Mandel wrote:

[W]e are down 839K private jobs compared to the previous trough in November 2001. The only other negative trough-trough case was July 1980 to November 1982 – and many economists treat the 1980 and 1981-82 recessions as a single downturn.

Dr. Mandel and the numerous other economic pundits and economists who have since cited his September 4 blog post on “America’s lost decade for jobs” are calling attention to an important trend, but not the one that the media savvy Harvard-trained economist seems to think he is describing.

A closer look at the data cited by Dr. Mandel shows that, although he treats the U.S. as a monolith, just 22 of the 50 states actually have negative private-sector job growth since November 2001. Furthermore, a review of the state-by-state job data alongside state private-sector unionization data suggests that pro-monopoly labor policy, a factor not mentioned at all by Dr. Mandel, may be the principal reason why the job market has been so bad in nearly half the states.

U.S. public policy generally opposes monopolies, or at the very least purports to do so. But federal labor law and the labor laws of most states actually encourage union monopoly control over employees. This fact sheet focuses on federal labor law, which targets the overwhelming majority of private-sector employees and businesses across the country.

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Cost of Living-Adjusted Earnings and Disposable Incomes Are Highest in Least-Unionized States

United States Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is expected, as soon as next month, to bring to the Senate floor legislation designed to help Organized Labor increase, sharply and across the country, the share of private-sector employees who are compelled to accept a union as their “exclusive” bargaining agent in their dealings with their employer.

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State Executives’ Successful 2009 Vetoes of Big Labor Power Grabs Under Attack in U.S. Capitol

Two years ago this month, the U.S. House of Representatives rubber-stamped Congressman Dale Kildee’s (D-Mich.) cynically mislabeled “Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act.” This Big Labor-backed legislation would have established a new federal mandate imposing “exclusive representation,” i.e. monopoly bargaining, over state and local police and firefighters and other public-safety employees nationwide. However, intense public opposition, mobilized primarily by the National Right to Work Committee, prevented the Kildee bill from passing the Senate during the 2007-2008 Congress.

It has long been a goal of government union officials to wield broad monopoly-bargaining power over state and local employees across the nation. Mr. Kildee’s bill, which he has reintroduced in the current Congress as H.R. 413, would be a first step towards achieving this objective.

Hundreds of thousands of firemen, policemen and paramedics who up to now have been free under state law to negotiate on their own behalf would be stripped of that freedom by H.R. 413. It may accurately be labeled as the “Police/Fire Monopoly-Bargaining Bill.” And, if the experience of states that have enacted similar public-sector monopoly-bargaining laws is any indication, H.R. 413 would lead to substantially heavier burdens for taxpayers.

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