Forced unionization hurts the economy

The individual worker should be allowed to decide if they want to be part of a union or not. Forced unionization is ultimately bad for the economy, as a recent study by the Fraser Institute demonstrates:

In a recently published Fraser Institute article, Richard Vedder, a professor of economics at Ohio University, summarized his research on the effects of worker-choice laws in the United States. He found an enormous migration into states with worker-choice laws from states without such laws. Specifically, from 2000 to 2009, approximately five million Americans moved from the 28 states without worker-choice laws to the 22 states with worker-choice laws. Prof. Vedder concludes that workers “flatly prefer a legal environment where the sale of their labour services is not constrained by laws requiring union dues payment.”

More importantly, Prof. Vedder finds that worker-choice states have higher rates of labour participation, lower unemployment rates, higher rates of economic growth and greater investment, even after controlling for a number of other factors such as tax burden, the level of education, the amount of land area, and population growth.

His research also estimates the impact of worker-choice laws on living standards, and finds that implementing a worker-choice law would increase a jurisdiction’s per person income by $2,800.
Several other studies buttress Prof. Vedder’s recent research. For example, Paul Kersey, in a study entitled “The Economic Effects of Right-to-Work Laws: 2007,” found that between 2001 and 2006, the economies of states that enacted worker-choice laws grew by 3.4% on average, compared to 2.6% in non-worker-choice states. Moreover, jobs grew by 1.2% annually in worker-choice states, while jobs in non-worker choice states grew by only 0.6% over the same period.

Read More at the Financial Post