Labor & Employment Law

Proposed Ohio, Missouri Laws Lower Wages

By James Parks

A new analysis shows workers in states with laws like those proposed in Ohio and Missouri, which supporters misleadingly call ?right to work,? have lower wages, whether they belong to a union or not.

The report, ?Compensation Penalty of ?Right-to-Work Laws by Economic Policy Institute (EPI) economists Elise Gould and Heidi Shierholz find that wages in those states are 3.2 percent lower than in states without the law.

Workers in states with similar laws also are less likely to have employer-sponsored health insurance and employer-sponsored pensions.

These laws are designed to please the CEOs who contributed generously to the campaigns of the governors and state legislators who are pushing them.

They are a particularly bad idea when the economy is mired in a stagnant recovery, Gould and Shierholz said.

Read the full report here.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on February 17, 2011 (boomark / email).