Workers lose pay due to right-to-work laws in SC, other states

A trio of Georgia Tech professors have concluded what many people have long suspected: Right-to-work laws aren’t good for employee bank accounts.

“Right-to-work laws shift bargaining power from unions to firms and consequently lead to a decrease in worker wages,” the educators said in a study to be published in the August edition of Journal of Financial Economics.

The study examines 19,574 collective bargaining agreements struck by labor unions between 1998 and 2016 to determine how wages are affected in the 27 states, including South Carolina, that have adopted right to work laws. Such laws allow employees to join a unionized workplace without having to pay union dues. Even if those workers don’t join the union, they are covered by any collective bargaining agreement the union negotiates.

That leads to a decrease in union bargaining power — and a substantial impact on pay.

Right-to-work laws reduced nominal wages — those that aren’t adjusted for inflation — by about 0.6 percent per year during the 1998-2016 study period.

Overall, average annual wage growth during the period was 2.9 percent and average annual inflation was 2.6 percent. That means average U.S. wages have barely tracked above the inflation rate long term. When the decline due to right to work laws is factored in, workers in states where those laws exist lost ground to inflation.

https://www.postandcourier.com/business/study-workers-lose-pay-due-to-right-to-work-laws-in-sc-other-states/article_8f683acc-bae1-11ea-8882-4b1cff346d28.html