Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Hoosiers to become right to work state?

  You have to give it to the Republican governors: they have cajones.
  Governor Mitch Daniels is taking on the unions and proposing that Indiana become a right to work state.
  The unions object.

However, opponents of “right-to-work” measures argue that talk of improving Indiana’s business climate is just a “pretext.” 
“It’s a political attack on what the Republicans see as one of their main opponents — organized labor,” said Jim Robinson, the top United Steelworkers official in Indiana. “They want to weaken unions to help assure continued Republican majorities.”
  A list of right to work states can be found here.
  Right to work means workers cannot be forced to join unions. 
  Wikipedia explains right to work here.
A March 3, 2008 editorial in The Wall Street Journalcompared Ohio to Texas and examined why "Texas is prospering while Ohio lags". According to the editorial, during the previous decade, while Ohio lost 10,400 jobs, Texas gained 1,615,000 new jobs. The opinon piece proposed several possible reasons for the economic expansion in Texas, including the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the absence of a state income tax, and right-to-work laws.[10]
  An effort is underway to make Ohio a right to work state. Is this the right time in Ohio to push such legislation, given the resounding defeat of Issue 2?
  Given the miserable condition many states are in with regard to legacy costs, one wonders what the right time is.

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