Right-to-Work

Right-to-work laws are currently in vogue among conservatives, but they have been favored by economists for a long time.  Essentially a right-to-work law makes "closed shops" illegal.  A closed shop is a unionized company in which everyone employee is required to join the union, if you don't you cannot work there.  This means that you can be interviewed, and hired, by the management of a closed shop, but if you refuse to join the union (perhaps you don't want to pay the dues or you don't like the political activism of the leadership) you can never start your new job. 

This is one of the things Ron Klain, former Chief of Staff to Biden, gets very wrong in a recent column.  In his efforts to paint right-to-work laws in a bad light, Klain not only uses a bad example to explain his topic, but uses misleading information to "prove" his point.

In attempting to prove that RTW laws don't have beneficial affects, he uses information from one state (Oklahoma) and one industry (manufacturing), to talk about how manufacturing jobs continue to leave OK.  Interesting thing, as of right now, unemployment in OK is 6.1%.  That number is 2.2% below the national number.  Those people must be finding jobs somewhere.  The thing about RTW laws is not that they protect one type of work, but that they protect all types of work - especially medium size businesses. 

Oh, and Klain claims that the growth of the auto industry is proof that you don't need RTW laws.  Nevermind that the majority of auto industry growth is taking place in RTW states....