Supporters and opponents of legislation that makes Indiana the country’s 23rd “right-to-work” state agreed on just one thing: Its impact will be enormous and long-lasting.
The legislation, which had already had passed the Indiana House of Representatives, was approved by the Senate Feb. 1 and was headed to the desk of Gov. Mitch Daniels for a signature the same day.
Supporters argued it would improve job creation in the state and predicted wages will rise as job creation tightens the labor supply.
Opponents, who asserted there is no evidence to support job creation claims, said the heavy-handedness of Republicans who passed the legislation could inspire a push-back reaction for years by voters who regard it as a display of contempt for working people and for the democratic process.
Rhetoric on the subject was heated even before Republicans rejected an attempt to put the matter to a referendum, and it remained heated even as the law was rushed to passage.
“I know the governor is now trying to minimize it, but he wasn’t trying to minimize it when he made it the No. 1 agenda item and put all that energy into it and bought all that ad time,” Tom Lewandowski, president of the Northeast Indiana Central Labor Council, said of Daniels’ support for the right-to-work legislation. “Do they fear repercussions?”
Will protests against right-to-work grab some of the national spotlight that will shine on Indianapolis during the Super Bowl? Lewandowski said that was difficult to predict, considering the intensity of feelings about the issue.
“They’ve been deathly afraid of something negative at the Super Bowl, like that’s the most important thing in their lives is their image at the Super Bowl. There’s an assumption they can do something we consider grievous and think there’s not going to be repercussions to it,” he said. “I don’t know what those are going to be, and I think most of them will be spontaneous.”
Lewandowski said the day before the Feb. 1 Senate vote that the Indiana House had presented the best opportunity to block the legislation. After a right-to-work bill came up last year, 30 Democratic legislators in the House shut it down for five weeks by leaving the state to prevent the measure from passing. The threat of heavy fines, however, discouraged them from falling back on that strategy this year.
Opponents, including unions, said passage of a right-to-work bill threatened the right of workers to effective collective bargaining, which they wanted to protect. Proponents, including chamber of commerce groups, said it gives workers the right to decide whether to pay for representation.
For years in Indiana, an employer and a union could stipulate in a labor contract that workers would lose employment in the workplace the union covered if they failed to pay fees for representation, which the union collected as dues from its members. Right-to-work prohibits such contracts from requiring workers to pay union fees.
As opponents of the legislation braced for the Senate’s passage, Lewandowski observed that “so many workers feel insulted and angry in ways that I haven’t seen before. I don’t know how that’s going to be manifested; we’re just now beginning to feel the sting of the slap.”
News services reported thousands of right-to-work opponents, as expected, poured out of the Statehouse after the Feb. 1 Senate vote for a rally on the Statehouse lawn and a march to Lucas Oil Stadium, the site of the Feb. 5 Super Bowl.
“Wednesday, we are going to crash their party and remind them that we aren’t going anywhere,” the AFL-CIO warned in a message posted Jan. 31. “Regardless of the outcome of tomorrow’s Senate vote, this movement is moving forward. And, tomorrow, united in solidarity, we will take the first steps toward taking back our state.”
Many union leaders and veteran activists were dispirited at the prospect of the bill becoming law, “but the membership is saying, ‘Hey, we’ve got to fight on,’” Lewandowski said. “They’re saying, ‘Let’s do this, let’s try that … I don’t know how long it will last, but so far it’s been surprising to us.”
Given the level of opposition to the bill, Matt Bell, executive director of the Regional Chamber of Northeast Indiana, predicted efforts to get it passed eventually will be regarded as heroic.
“We will be the first right-to-work state east of the Mississippi River and north of the Mason-Dixon line. It’s groundbreaking,” he said. “This is the single most important legislative initiative to assist economic development in this state that we will see in a generation. It is that important for the future of the state.
“We will see more companies looking to move into Indiana, and we’ll see more companies that would have left expanding and adding jobs,” Bell said. “There are several companies that have cited the fact that this bill has moved forward in expressing new or renewed interest in Indiana as a place for adding jobs and new capital at existing facilities, and as a reason to do business in Indiana versus other states.”
Bell added because of the favorable impact a right-to-work law will have on the state’s economy, Indiana residents eventually will reflect on the campaign for its passage as “a story of courage and leadership from our legislators, led by Sen. David Long,” he said. Long, R-Fort Wayne, serves as president pro tempore of the Senate.
The law will go into effect on March 14, and Bell predicted news of a victory would get so much national and international attention that economic development officials in northeast Indiana and throughout the state will see more opportunities to compete for projects that bring employment.
John Sampson, president and CEO for the Northeast Indiana Regional Partnership, said his organization would reach out to business relocation experts on the right-to-work law through an electronic newsletter, but “we’re not going to have to advertise to have people understand what has happened here.”
Almost everyone at an International Economic Development Council conference Sampson was attending Jan. 31 seemed to know the right-to-work legislation had passed the House and was likely to become law, he said.
NIRP representatives plan to contact employers in cases where they know the employer was only considering right-to-work states for a project, he said.
Sampson and Bell predicted unions that do a good job of representing the interests of their membership would remain strong in Indiana.
“I believe peer pressure in the workplace is very influential,” Sampson said. “I don’t think someone just gets up and says, ‘I’m not going to pay dues.’”
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