Documents Zullo, Roland 5 results

"While considerable efforts have been made by legislators, business associations, and political organizations to pass right-to-work (RTW) laws in states across the country, the empirical evidence on the effect of adopting an RTW law on labor market outcomes and state budgets is both varied and mixed. This article provides a forecast on the effect of RTW laws on important labor market outcomes—including earnings, employment, unionization, and inequality. It also investigates RTW's impacts on two particularly affected industries (manufacturing and construction) and three demographic groups (African-American, Latino/a, and female workers). The findings are subsequently applied to the state of Illinois to project the potential law's impact on Illinois workers and on the state's tax revenues. By and large, as a policy prescription, RTW would generate harmful effects to Illinois' economy, lower its capacity to provide essential public services and degrade the quality and condition of the state's labor force."

"Using state-level data, 2001 through 2009, I test whether union density and right-to-work (RTW) laws predict worker fatalities in either the construction industry or in construction occupations. For both indices, higher levels of unionization equate with lower fatality rates. Right-to-work laws show no direct association with fatality rates. However, the interaction between RTW laws and unionization suggests that unions are less effective at protecting member safety in right-to-work states. Overall the findings support the hypothesis that RTW laws result in the underfunding of union safety training or accident prevention programs."

"Using county-level data, the author evaluates how labor affected the general pop¬ulation's political behavior during the 2000 U.S. presidential election. Voter turnout increased with unionization, but at declining rates with higher levels of unionization. The unionization/voter turnout link was stronger in counties with lower median incomes, higher income inequality, and lower levels of education, suggesting that unions partially closed the political participation gap between low- and high-SES (socioeconomic status) populations. State right-to-work laws, and the absence of collective bargaining rights for public employees, reduced labor's ability to increase voter turnout. The union effect on candidate preference had a positive, curvilinear association with union membership, but this effect was stronger in high-SES regions than in low-SES regions. Overall, these results imply a paradox for organized labor: unions can effectively increase working-class voter turnout, but they have difficulty persuading the working class to vote for pro-labor political candidates."

"In the United States, right-to-work (RTW) laws impose the open shop on labour unions. I test whether RTW affects the frequency and outcomes of union representation petitions. Quasi-experimental tests reveal no association between RTW law and the volume of certification petitions filed and that fewer certification petitions are withdrawn under RTW. Thus, unions do not appear to retreat from new member organizing under RTW law. Moreover, RTW correlates with a decline in decertification and unit clarification petitions, implying that under the open shop, RTW law reduces internal union dissension. Although fewer decertification cases go to an election under RTW law, unions are more likely to lose cases that proceed to a referendum. These changes benefit smaller more than larger bargaining units. I infer that the law nudges the system away from an industrial union model in favour of smaller, craft or occupation-based units."