Spooky News for Compulsory Unionism

The Foundation is tracking announcements of expansions, relocations, and greenfield investments published on Area Development’s website. Founded in 1965, the publication “is considered the leading executive magazine covering corporate site selection and relocation. … Area Development is published quarterly and has 60,000 mailed copies.” In an explanation to the Foundation, its editor wrote that items for Area Development‘s announcements listing are “culled from RSS feeds and press releases that are emailed to us from various sources, including economic development organizations, PR agencies, businesses, etc. We usually highlight ones that represent large numbers of new jobs and/or investment in industrial projects.”

In October, of 10,490 projected jobs, 8,602 — 82 percent — were slated for right-to-work (RTW) states:

As for the sub-metrics the Foundation scrutinizes:

* Ten domestic companies based in non-RTW states announced investments in RTW states. Just two announcements went the other way.

* RTW prevailed in foreign direct investment, too. Thirteen projects are headed to RTW states, with three to occur in a non-RTW state.

* Both domestic relocations made the jump from non-RTW to RTW states.

* One foreign-owned firm relocated its headquarters, moving (surprisingly) from a RTW to a non-RTW state.

Marquee RTW investments included Vector Space Systems’s pick of Arizona for its new factory (400 jobs), KLX Aerospace Solutions’s decision to build “a new corporate headquarters with a state of the art distribution center” in Florida (400 jobs), the opening of ABB’s “advanced technology manufacturing facility” in Mississippi (300 jobs), and OKI Data Corporation’s selection of Texas for a new operations hub (100 jobs).

Methodological specifics:

* All job estimates — “up to,” “as many as,” “about” — were taken at face value, for RTW and non-RTW states alike.

* If an announcement did not make an employment projection, efforts were made to obtain an estimate from newspaper articles and/or press releases from additional sources.

* If no job figure could be found anywhere, the project was not counted, whether it was a RTW or non-RTW state.

* Non-border-crossing relocations were not counted, border-crossing relocations were.