INDIANAPOLIS | The Republican-controlled Indiana Senate will likely debate and vote on right-to-work legislation next week after the Senate labor committee voted 6-4 to approve the proposal Friday.
State Sen. Brent Waltz, R-Greenwood, broke with his Republican colleagues to join the three committee Democrats voting "no" on Senate Bill 269. Waltz said he will only support right-to-work if it exempts building trades unions.
For five-and-a-half hours Friday, members of the Senate and House labor committees met in a rare joint session to hear testimony supporting and opposing right-to-work, which would allow non-union employees at a union workplace to receive union services without paying for them.
State Sen. Carlin Yoder, R-Middlebury, sponsor of the legislation, said Indiana owes it to the 9 percent of unemployed Hoosiers to do everything it can to create jobs for them, including enacting right-to-work.
"There's no question in my mind that at the very least there's a possibility of new jobs coming to the state of Indiana," Yoder said.
But Indiana needs only to look at Oklahoma, the most recent state to approve a right-to-work law, to know that's not true, said Gordon Lafer, a University of Oregon labor expert.
Despite promises that right-to-work would bring more manufacturing to Oklahoma after the law was enacted in 2001, the state has actually lost one-third of its manufacturing jobs in the past decade, Lafer said.
"Every single prediction made by right-to-work proponents, including site selection consultants, was wrong," Lafer said. "What's the reason for believing the formula that failed in Oklahoma will succeed here?"
State Sen. Jim Arnold, D-LaPorte, and state Sen. Karen Tallian, D-Ogden Dunes, both voted against the right-to-work legislation.
The House members attending the joint committee hearing, including state Rep. Chuck Moseley, D-Portage, could not vote on House Bill 1001, an identical right-to-work proposal, because the House Democrats continued their session boycott for a third day, preventing the legislation from being introduced and assigned to committee.
House Speaker Brian Bosma, R-Indianapolis, said no-show Democrats are now eligible to be fined $1,000 a day under an "anti-bolting" law enacted following last year's five-week Democratic walkout.
But Bosma said he will wait until next week to decide whether to ask a court to impose the fines.