Every now and then, the idea of Ohio becoming a right-to-work state creeps up, and the labor unions work quickly to squash the effort.  There is a union committee called We Are Ohio with their slogan “Right to work is wrong.”  They have all sorts of talking points about right-to-work being “unsafe” or “unfair” for one reason or another.  But if the movement claims to be in support of workers and families, maybe they consider some of these facts from the Heritage Foundation (2009):

• Research shows that unions directly cause firms to reduce their investments. In fact, investment drops sharply after unions organize a company. One study found that unionizing reduces capital investment by 30 percent--the same effect as a 33 percentage point increase in the corporate tax rate.
• Economists consistently find that unions decrease the number of jobs available in the economy.
• The vast majority of manufacturing jobs lost over the past three decades have been among union members--non-union manufacturing employment has risen: Unionized manufacturing jobs fell by 75 percent between 1977 and 2008. Non-union manufacturing employment increased by 6 percent over that time.
• Widespread unionization delays recovery from economic downturns.
• Studies typically find that unionized companies earn profits between 10 percent and 15 percent lower than those of comparable non-union firms.
• Economic research demonstrates overwhelmingly that unionized firms invest less in both physical capital and intangible R&D than non-union firms do.
• New unionization is associated with at least -10% abnormal returns, equivalent to $40,500 per unionized worker.

Ohio also happens to be one of the highest income tax states, which explains why from 1998 to 2007 it saw a loss of 1,100 people every day including Sundays and holidays to a state without income taxes.  Those states that are right-to-work and zero or low income taxes created 89% more jobs than high income tax, union states like Ohio over that same time period.

So long as labor unions continue their choke-hold on the people of Ohio, its economy will languish.  But then again, Ohio did go for Obama in this last election … so perhaps they are getting exactly what they deserve.