AUSTIN – The Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Center for Economic Freedom today released a paper by Stanley Greer, senior research association for the National Institute for Labor Relations Research (NILRR), examining labor-policy reforms to protect the freedom to work and preserve the Lone Star State’s strong economic growth.
“If the principal purpose of the Organized Labor movement were to raise rank-and-file employees’ living standards, Texas would be one of last states, if not the 50th, on the list of union organizing targets,” said Greer.
Even harsh and relentless critics of Texas’ public policies routinely acknowledge that the Lone Star State’s economic growth has long outpaced the national average, and not by a small margin. This paper shows that employees of all skill levels, ranging from those with less than a high school education to advanced degree holders, benefit from Texas’s low cost of living and superior growth.
For all these reasons, Texas is an employee-friendly state, and also a very low-union-density state. But as more and more states act to reign in the harmful effects of union special privileges and protect the freedom to work, Texans can’t afford to remain complacent.
“Texas’ status as an employee-friendly Right to Work state is one of the key factors that has made it the nation’s economic leader,” said Bill Peacock, the Foundation’s vice president of research and director of the Center for Economic Freedom. “However, we need to take additional steps to keep unions from endangering both employees’ freedoms and Texas’ economic competitiveness.”
To read the full report, visit: http://txpo.li/labor-management-policy
Stanley Greer is a senior research associate for the National Institute for Labor Relations Research (NILRR). He is also the newsletter editor for the National Right to Work Committee, with which NILRR is affiliated.
The Texas Public Policy Foundation is a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin, Texas.