Wall Street Journal Editorial: Show Me the Jobs

April 25th, 2011 by MarkTwain · No Comments

Great editorial today in The Journal on “right to work.”

Twenty two states already have right-to-work laws and they’ve tended to outperform the others economically, a fact that has states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, Minnesota, Maine and New Hampshire working on their own reforms. In Missouri, state senate President pro-tem Rob Mayer has pushed right to work to improve the state’s business climate. Since January 2009, the Show Me State has been in a jobs slump, losing some 90,000 jobs last year. Despite gains last month, the state unemployment rate of 9.1% still lingers above the national average of 8.8%.

It doesn’t help that Missouri is surrounded by right-to-work states, leaving many businesses the option of setting up shop across the border. Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska and Tennessee all have right-to-work laws, and most have unemployment rates significantly lower than Missouri’s. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, while Missouri’s 0.6% decrease in employment made it the third worst state in the country for job loss for 2010, neighboring Kansas was among the 10 best, with a 6.8% rate.

Governor Jay Nixon, a Democrat who spoke to the Teamsters on Tuesday, has said he intends to veto the legislation. While Republicans have a theoretically veto-proof majority in the senate, local unions are doing their best to pick off a few Republicans with a history of labor ties. Targets include Senators Tom Dempsey, Kevin Engler, Mike Kehoe, David Pearce and Eric Schmitt, all of whom have received campaign contributions or endorsements from unions or union affiliated groups Read more…