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.
Until you’ve been faced with the “option” of joining a union or lose your job it’s hard to see. I would not jump in a pool if a union-man was drowning. They (unions) had their place at one time, now all a union does is keep a lazy person on the job.
John’s opinion of unions only employing lazy people is a well-rehearsed often regurgitated line. I came out of the oil field and building industry. My experience as a member of the International Association of Machinist and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW) is that members are some of the hardest working, most pride filled people I have ever worked with.
As with anything, it depends. I do believe that unions inherently protect the worst, least productive workers. That is by definition. However, certainly machinists and aerospace workers as a general group are going to be highly-skilled workers and generally hard-working. That is also almost by definition. I don’t like to stereotype and prefer to stick to the facts which are that workers should have a right TO join a union and a right NOT TO join a union or pay union dues.