An op-ed appeared recently in The Washington Examiner ("Indiana gets right-to-work just in time," Feb. 2) by Stan Greer celebrating Indiana's adoption of an anti-union law and questioning research that I and other scholars have performed documenting the law's failure.
So-called "right-to-work" laws make it illegal for unions to ensure that each employee who benefits from a union contract pays his or her fair share of the costs of administering it.
The aim is to weaken unions and cut wages. As the Indiana Chamber of Commerce explains, unions "increase labor costs," making a state "less attractive" for investors. Through RTW, employees are supposed to abandon unions, reduce wages and hope this attracts more employers.
Only problem is, it doesn't work. Statistical research shows that RTW succeeds in cutting wages -- by about $1,500 a year -- but does nothing to boost job growth.
In large part, globalization has rendered RTW impotent. In the 1970s, companies may have moved to southern states in search of lower wages. But in 2012, companies looking for cheap labor are moving to China or Mexico, not South Carolina.
Employer surveys confirm that RTW is not a significant draw; in 2010 manufacturers ranked it 16th among factors affecting location decisions. For higher-tech, higher-wage employers, nine of the 10 most-favored states are non-RTW.
Greer, who is a National Right to Work Committee employee, works hard to deny these findings. His column complains about my objecting to one of his recent claims, in which he touted the job growth of Midwestern "RTW states" without admitting that the growth was driven by North Dakota's discovery of oil.
Indeed, since the bottom of the recession in mid-2009, non-RTW Indiana added twice as many manufacturing jobs as all Midwestern RTW states combined. Unfortunately, this is only one of numerous misstatements that promote RTW by concealing important facts.
Greer's organization likewise celebrates Texas' job growth as evidence of RTW's success, without mentioning that 100 percent of Texas' recent growth is in government jobs -- nothing to do with RTW.
There are many ways to lie with numbers, but only one way to tell the truth. It's called "regression analysis" -- the statistical science of holding "all other things equal." Everyone knows Texas has grown faster than Michigan, for instance.
But how do we know if that growth is due to warm weather, the oil industry, or Mexican immigrants? The only honest way to measure the impact of RTW is by holding everything else equal in order to identify the particular impact of this one policy.
This is the fundamental requirement of any meaningful research. And when done right, the results are clear: RTW lowers wages and benefits without boosting job growth.
Unfortunately, none of Greer's publications meet this fundamental standard of scholarship; that's why they are disregarded by scholars and unhelpful for lawmakers.
The Greer op-ed attacked my work in personal terms. But it's really not personal: The failure of RTW has been documented by numerous scholars. Separate studies by business professors at the University of Kentucky and industrial relations professors at Michigan State both concluded that RTW had no discernible impact on job growth.
A Hofstra University economist found that RTW decreased wages but "has no effect on economic growth." Economists at University of Nevada and Claremont McKenna College determined that the 2001 adoption of RTW in Oklahoma resulted in lower wages for non-union workers, but had no impact on job growth. All of these are professional studies carried out by independent scholars.
If Greer is going to write bitter op-eds denouncing everyone whose research discredits RTW, he's going to be a busy man.
Gordon Lafer is associate professor at the University of Oregon's Labor Education and Research Center, and a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), which is funded in part by organized labor.
