Pro-Union States Lose a Million Jobs to Right-to-Work States

Democrats Fight to Nullify States’ Right-to-Work Laws and Mandate Union Membership

A recent report based on Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data confirmed what was anecdotally apparent: that jobs continue to flood out of pro-union states and into states with more free-market policies.

The study by economist Todd Nesbit and public policy analyst Michael LaFaive reported that right-to-work (RTW) states added 1.3 million jobs since the pandemic, while non-RTW states lost 1.1 million jobs. RTW laws state that workers cannot be forced to join unions or pay union dues.

The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935, forced employees who work for a unionized company to pay union dues as a condition of employment. However, the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, which was first vetoed by President Harry S. Truman and then passed over his objections, allowed states to pass laws against forced union membership.

Currently, 28 states have passed RTW laws. They are now reaping the benefits in terms of higher investment, employment, population growth, and state tax revenues.

“It’s not surprising to see the latest BLS numbers,” Lee Schalk, vice president of policy at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), told The Epoch Times. “It’s also consistent with the migration trends that we’ve tracked. This really came into focus during the pandemic as hundreds of thousands of people left non-right-to-work states like New York and California, and they flooded into right-to-work states like Florida, Texas, North Carolina, and a lot of southern states.”

The study by Nesbit and LaFaive stated that 16 of the 28 RTW states have now fully recovered the jobs lost during the pandemic. Some have even exceeded pre-pandemic levels of employment. Of the non-RTW states, only Colorado and Montana have recovered all the lost jobs.

To halt the decline of union