NH Lawmakers to Hear Right to Work Bill

By David Darman on Tuesday, March 4, 2003.

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Lawmakers are scheduled to hear testimony tomorrow/today on a bill to make New Hampshire a so-called “right to work” state.

Proponents want to stop unions from collecting fees from non-union workers who enjoy union benefits.

Organized labor charges the bill is part of a national effort to weaken the labor movement.

NHPR’s David Darman has more.

Right to work proponents frame the issue as one of personal choice.

Representative Maureen Mooney of Merrimack is lead sponsor of House Bill 821.

She says people should have a choice whether or not to join a union when they’re on the job.
02 22 there are many people that don’t benefit from union, and there are people who would rather use their money in other ways rather than paying union dues and for those people this bill would benefit. 02 34

Federal law prohibits unions from compelling workers to join.

But the law does allow unions to collect fees from non-union workers.

Those fees cover administrative costs.

Mark MacKenzie is New Hampshire AFL-CIO president.

He says unions collect the money because they have to represent all the workers in a workplace, whether the workers belong to the union or not.
21 103 we are required to represent those employees the same way that employees who pay the union dues. So that’s really what the tradeoff is. They get the same benefits , they have the same protections that union members have, 21 118

Right to work advocates charge that these fees have an economic drag on states.

Doug Stafford of the National Right to Work Committee, which is supporting the New Hampshire effort, claims jobs are created when states adopt right to work laws.
40 51 …The most recent example is Oklahoma, and the first six months after Oklahoma passed a right to work law, it went from 40th to first in new job creation. 40 108

Oklahoma’s latest employment statistics show jobs grew by about a third of one percent between December, 2001 and a year later.

During the same period, New Hampshire unemployment rose point eight percent.

Union officials say the evidence from Oklahoma and elsewhere shows that right to work may create jobs, but they are mainly low income, dead end jobs.

Mark MacKenzie of New Hampshire AFL-CIO says union data shows that states with right to work laws have higher poverty rates than New Hampshire.
25 29 …We know that medical benefits are paid less, we know that workers make less money, about 5 thousand dollars, about 55 hundred dollars less in right to work states than they do in non right to work states. 25 44

Unions charge the right to work movement is out to weaken organized labor.

Tom Jurevich is the Director of the Labor Relations and Research Center at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.

He says unions can be sapped of strength when non-union workers can opt out of paying fees.
14 32 for labor movements what this translates to is there’s little incentive to then join a union. Its hard to keep a viable organization going, particularly when people still receive the benefits who don’t pay dues. 14 43

The organizers of New Hampshire’s right to work movement say it has 35 members, and that slightly more than half of the group’s funding comes from business.

Despite the passion on both sides over right to work laws, little unbiased information exists about their economic effects.

Tom Jurevich of the University of Massachusetts says economic outcomes often have so many causes, its hard to isolate the effects of one law.

Jurevich says both sides will argue economics, but really, its an emotional issue.
18 …its more than anything an argument about values. Its about principles, it’s about ideology, its about beliefs. As I say the economic evidence is not sharp, or hard enough to guide, either citizens voting on these kind of issues, or for policy makers grappling with them. 18 20

The 22 states that have passed right to work laws are in every part of the country/

There is, however, a swath of states from New England to Missouri that have resisted the effort.

Organizers of the right to work movement for New Hampshire hope the state will be the first in the northeast to adopt the measure.

They say they were encouraged to bring the issue to state lawmakers after the results of New Hampshire’s 2002 election.