It’s no accident that right-to-work states have the highest net domestic population growth.
As laboratories of democracy, states are constantly competing to make themselves more attractive for businesses and their people.
These decisions are not made in a vacuum. It matters who governs and which policies are put in place to help spur economic growth and success for businesses and workers alike. Pro-worker policies help individual workers earn more money as they can bargain for themselves in a merit-based economy according to their own abilities. Individual worker freedom has the most significant impact on each person’s paycheck and opportunity for long-term financial success.
The annual U-Haul growth index shows that people are fleeing states that have high taxes, high crime, and big government for states that offer low taxes, safe communities, and small government. People and businesses want to keep more of the money they earn and not give it to largely wasteful government spending, as found in many states that are losing population, such as New York, California, and Illinois.
Additionally, in the United States Census Bureau’s latest report examining state population, each of the top ten states for net domestic population migration growth is a right-to-work state, while nine of the bottom ten are not. In the latter, employees working in a union-represented workplace have to join and pay a union as a condition of employment. Alternatively, well-run states like South Carolina, Tennessee, Idaho, Texas, and others are benefiting from their pro-worker policies.
A recent trend, especially among red-hot growth states in the South, is requiring that companies receiving state-taxpayer-funded economic incentives ensure a private or secret ballot vote on any unionization efforts of their workforces. To quote the Wall Street Journal editorial board, Tennessee Speaker Cameron Sexton’s “legislation would ensure that companies that benefit from state taxpayer dollars don’t sign away their workers’ rights. . . . It would be better if states didn’t pick winners and losers with taxpayer dollars. But if states are going to give businesses handouts, it makes sense to condition them on respecting worker rights. Competition among states is heating up. Kudos to Tennessee Republicans for seeking to make their state friendlier to workers as well as business.”
When workers, or outside unions, try to unionize a private sector workplace, there are two avenues through which to hold the vote.
The American way is a private or secret ballot vote, where each knows his vote, and no one else. Just like you and I go to the polls and vote for candidates from president down to dogcatcher, Americans strongly support the sanctity of the ballot box and a voter’s privacy.
The alternative is card-check, where union supporters go around the workplace and collect signatures on a card — often done in full view of an employee’s co-workers, so everyone on the jobsite knows exactly how you voted. This can even include repeated visits to workers’ homes involving intimidation, coercion, and other heavy pressure tactics to get them to sign.
The South has quickly become an economic powerhouse for many industries, including nonunionized auto manufacturers. However, the United Auto Workers union is engaged in a full-court press to unionize as many of these plants as possible. They finally succeeded at one Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga after three separate votes in recent years.
However, recent developments at the Volkswagen plant show that workers might be regretting their vote. Hamilton County Mayor Weston Wamp said this about the UAW: “I fear and resent the dysfunction [the UAW] brings to communities, and has brought to our community. Every place they’ve gone, job losses and turmoil have followed. But I’m surprised it’s gone this south this fast.”
The UAW once represented 1.5 million workers, but that number is down to almost 380,000 as its unrealistic demands have slowly led to the erosion of U.S. manufacturing jobs as companies move their operations overseas. Even though it looks like VW and the UAW reached a tentative agreement, the long-term realities are that they are going to end up selling the farm, and it will ultimately hurt the economic viability of VW in Chattanooga and its workers.
Increasingly, American workers are rejecting unionization efforts, and many governors — especially Republican governors in the South — are sticking up for worker freedom as well. They’ve seen what the UAW’s unrealistic demands and extreme tactics have done to Detroit and the market share of the Big Three automakers.
Governors and legislatures across the South are implementing this pro-worker protection to guard against union intimidation tactics. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee was the first governor in the country to sign this pro-worker freedom legislation back in 2023. Then, in 2024, fellow neighboring states of Alabama and Georgia followed in Tennessee’s footsteps. Last year, Mississippi passed similar legislation, but it did not take effect because of a procedural maneuver by Democrats on the last legislative day. A new version of the Mississippi bill is expected to pass this spring.
States across the country should adopt these private sector labor reforms to protect the rights of workers to have a private ballot on any unionization effort in their state.