Yesterday we released a set of white papers to demonstrate that the reality of the American workplace looks nothing like the version depicted by union propaganda. "Responding to Union Rhetoric: The Reality of the American Workplace" highlights the inaccurate arguments used by labor leaders to support an agenda that upsets the delicate balance in labor laws and would hinder the recovery of our economy. In Chapter 1 we looked at America's workers; Chapter 2 looks at the middle class.

The Real Economic Effects of Labor Unions

Even if there is credibility to organized labor's claim that the American worker is worse off now then any previous time in our nation's history, evidence shows that unions and more unionized workplaces are not the answer. For example, the ten states with the highest percentage of a unionized workforce, on average, had a job growth rate of half that of the ten states with the lowest percentage of a unionized workforce. In addition, the ten most economically competitive states (as determined by a host of broad economic variables including taxes, regulations, legal standards, educational freedom, government debt, and right-to-work status) have a lower percentage of union membership among its entire workforce (6%), than the ten least economically competitive states (16.4%).

Union leaders claim that unionized jobs in heavy union density states provide higher wages than non-union jobs in low union density states. Such statistics, however, are misleading, because they are not adjusted for inflation, nor do they consider a worker's decreasing purchasing power in heavy union density states. That is, such statistics ignore the higher cost of living that workers face in heavy union density states like Michigan, or Ohio.