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Canada’s Experts Skewer Shoddy Study on Employee Free Choice |
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Opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act often claim the legislation would hurt employment. They base that falsehood on a study paid for by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its cronies, which purports to examine the effects of majority sign-up on the labor market in Canada.
Now, a devastating new critique shows the bought-and-paid-for “study,” by consultant Anne Layne-Farrar, is “misleading and poorly supported”—and that’s the nicest thing they could find to say. Just Labour, the Canadian labor-studies journal, features a series of articles on the Layne-Farrar piece by the experts who best know Canada’s labor market.
Among them, Noreen Pupo, director of the Center for Research on Work and Society at York University, says:
We refute efforts by business lobbyists opposing the [Employee Free Choice] Act to manipulate Canadian data and experience for purposes of defeating any strengthening of collective bargaining systems in the U.S. The vested interest of these business lobbyists in the continued erosion of collective bargaining in America has led them to misrepresent the Canadian experience.
This comprehensive look at U.S. and Canadian labor law examines the assumptions, analogies and claims that underlie opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act. More than 120 participating economists, historians and professors say union membership has had a positive impact on workers in Canada and that workers’ freedom to bargain has real benefits to wages across the economy.
In particular, they note that—contrary to Layne-Farrar’s claims in her nonpeer-reviewed study, which is based on limited data—there is no evidence that higher levels of union membership are correlated with unemployment. Indeed, the simple fact is Canada’s unemployment rate is lower than the U.S. rate.
In one article, “Should Congress Pass the Employee Free Choice Act? Some Neighborly Advice,” three business professors say the Employee Free Choice Act will safeguard workers’ freedoms and allow them to bargain their way to a better life. Labor law reform, these scholars say, will:
help to ensure that workers can exercise their basic right to meaningful representation at work and, potentially, win well-deserved gains that many have long been denied—and which could prove effective…for reducing inequality and returning America to prosperity.
This extensive analysis of Layne-Farrar’s research echoes an investigation by the Institute for Southern Studies, which called the Chamber-funded study
shockingly weak—based on a thin set of old and irrelevant data that doesn’t even bear out her own conclusions.
The practice of funding misleading research is a common tactic of the Chamber of Commerce. This past week, the Washington Post caught a Chamber flack—acting on a suggestion of the Chamber’s “allies in Congress”—trying to pay “a respected economist” $50,000 for a study attacking health care reform.
The next time you hear a pundit, politician or corporate lobbyist cite Layne-Farrar’s figures as fact, remember that even with the Big Bucks they have to spend, corporate front groups can’t buy their own truth. The latest issue of Just Labour offers a powerful rebuttal to the corporate disinformation campaign and strong arguments in support of the Employee Free Choice Act.
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Hey Seth Michaels, what would your Canadian “experts” have to say about these facts:
From November 2001 to July 2009, states in the U.S. with private sector unionization of 6.0% or less as of 2001 enjoyed a net private-sector job gain of nearly 1.5 million.
Over the same period, states with 2001 private-sector unionization of 6.1% to 10.9% lost 124,000 jobs. And states with 2001 private-sector unionization of 11.0% or more lost 890,000 jobs.
(State private-sector unionization levels for 2001 are available at the unionstats.com web site. Multi-year private-sector employment levels for the 50 states are available at the http://www.bls.gov web site.)
In light of these facts, isn’t it reasonable to forecast that the so-called EFCA, whose undisguised aim is to increase private-sector unionization, would sharply reduce private-sector employment growth if it worked as planned?
Your agenda-driven Canadian “experts” are out to lunch.
Stan Greer
National Right to Work Committee
National Institute for Labor Relations Research
Here’s the real deal:
–In the 10 states with the highest percentage of workers covered by collective bargaining contracts, the poverty rate is 10.1%–vs. 14.1% in the 10 states with the lowest percentage of workers covered by collective bargaining contracts.
–In the 10 states with the highest percentage of workers covered by collective bargaining contracts, 13.6% of the population lacks health insurance–vs. 16.5% in the 10 states with the lowest percentage of workers covered by collective bargaining contracts.
–In the 10 states with the highest percentage of workers covered by collective bargaining contracts, household income averages $57,036–vs. $46,132 in the 10 states with the lowest percentage of workers covered by collective bargaining agreements.
–In the 10 states with the highest percentage of workers covered by collective bargaining contracts, education spending averages $11,395 per student, vs. $8,408 per student in the 10 states with the lowest percentage of workers covered by collective bargaining agreements.
So collective bargaining raises living standards and quality of life for everyone–union members and non-union workers alike.
The 10 states with highest union density are: New York, Alaska, Hawaii, Washington, Michigan, California, New Jersey, Connecticut, Nevada and Illinois. The 10 states with lowest union density are: North Carolina, Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, Texas, Louisiana, South Dakota, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Utah.
Here’s the real deal. We were talking about job growth, not other data. Seth D. has no response about job growth, apparently, so he’s decided to change the subject. But his other arguments don’t hold up either.
As even union bosses know, the cost of living in New York, Alaska, Hawaii, California, and New Jersey is far higher than the cost of living in North Carolina, Georgia, South Carolina, and Texas. Once differences in cost of living are taken into account, the real poverty rate in the highest union density states is actually higher than the real poverty rate in the lowest union density states.
Second, the only reason the health insurance coverage rates in high union density states like New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and Illinois look relatively good is because in recent years millions of young people without jobs or insurance have left those states.
Since those young people typically move to low union density states, and not all of them get jobs with insurance right after they move, that makes such states look “worse.” But actually, they have created jobs that come with health insurance much more rapidly than have high union density states over the past decade.
Third, when you take into account the fact that, as of 2007, living costs in the 15 states with the highest union density were 22% higher than living costs in the 15 states with the lowest union density, the highest union density states are actually at a disadvantage when it comes to real household incomes.
Finally, even with living costs taken into account, Seth is right that “education” spending is higher in high union density state. Whether the results achieved are anything to brag about is another question. Also, the growth in the number of college graduates in high union density states is far slower than it is in low union density states. So, to the extent the high union density states successfully educate people, they tend to move to a low union density state, where job opportunities are better.
Stan Greer
National Right to Work Committee
National Institute for Labor Relations Research
Stan:
1. Empowering workers to bargain a contract with corporations does not cause job loss: In the current recession that has caused massive job loss all over the country, North Carolina lost 6% of its jobs since the start of the recession in 2007, while New York lost 2.4% of its jobs over the same period.
North Carolina is the state with the smallest percentage of workers having access to collective bargaining; New York is the state with the highest percentage of workers with access to collective bargaining.
Georgia, 2nd lowest state in the country in terms of collective bargaining coverage, lost 7.6% of its jobs so far in the current recession; Alaska, with 2nd highest collective bargaining coverage, experienced a job gain of 0.6% over the same period.
Again, bargaining rigthts do not destroy jobs, as the Canadian scholars demonstrate–and as serious economists at the OECD, ILO, World Bank and elsewhere have found as well.
2. Poverty is not higher in states where collective bargaining is more prevalent. In fact, union memberships lifts low-wage workers out of poverty:
http://www.aflcio.org/joinaunion/why/uniondifference/uniondiff11a.cfm
In states where collective bargaining is more widespread, life expectancy is higher, crime is lower, infant mortality is lower, and workplace fatality rates are lower than in states where the fewest workers have access to collective bargaining…and the list could go on.
Tula Connell, you and Seth M. both refuse to address facts you don’t like. It’s difficult for me to do a point by point rebuttal when you simply ignore whatever’s inconvenient.
Let’s start with one simple fact. Every single index that measures the relative cost of living in the 50 states shows that living expenses are far higher on average in states with high union density than they are in states with low union density.
For example, data from the nonpartisan Missouri Economic Research and Information Center, which I cited yesterday, show that the cost of living in 2007 in the 15 states with the highest private-sector union density was on average 22% higher than the cost of living in the 15 states with the lowest private sector union density.
If a dollar in Texas goes much further than a dollar in New York, then a nominal income that is perfectly adequate in Texas is really a poverty income in New York. That’s just common sense, and union officials know it and act on it during contract negotiations in New York, but Seth M. and Tula C. just ignore it when discussing poverty with me, apparently because it’s inconvenient.
Seth M., Tula C., do you have any study anywhere contradicting the fact that, on average, the cost of living is substantially higher in high union density states than it is in low union density states? If not, then you should stop ignoring that important fact when you compare incomes, salaries, wages and poverty levels in high union density and low union density states.
Stan Greer
Stan:
We can go back and forth with stats and data for weeks. The bottom line is NRTW opposes workers having a voice at the workplace and is doing everything it can to create 21st corporate feudalism to enserf workers so they can be chewed up and thrown away at the whim of management. With a voice at work through union membership, management actually has to deal with workers as human beings.