Darrell Minor is NOT a union activist. He IS a respected math professor at Columbus State Community College in Ohio.
For
the past two decades or so he has watched the decline of the American
middle class with growing dismay. So last year when he saw a pair of
Right Wing Republican
Legislators on television claiming that anti-union Right to Work Laws
bring prosperity, he decided to use his high-end math skills to
determine if their claim would stand up to the facts.
Using
an accepted mathematical measure know as the “Mann-Whitney Ranks Sums
statistical test” he ranked states from best to worst to see if there
were any significant
differences between Right to Work states and what he calls Worker
Friendly States.
After a five-hour drive from Lansing Michigan we dropped in on Professor Minor at his office in the Davidson Building.
Columbia
State Community College is a sprawling downtown campus that attracts a
yearly enrollment of just over 32,000 students. As our Dodge Caravan
rolled into the
parking lot, we noticed a warning sign featuring a picture of a handgun
with a line drawn through it. Even in the ‘Land of the Free’ students
are not allowed to bring their guns to class.
Professor
Minor was waiting for us and we (cameraperson Anna Jover Royo,
logistics coordinator Aura Aberback and graphic artist/driver Jason
Alward) set up the camera,
lights and started rolling.
Minor told us that what he found after crunching all the numbers surprised him.
Rather
than Right to Work laws ushering in an era of prosperity, he says the
opposite is true. His research showed that annual wages in Right to Work
states are an average
$1500 LOWER than in worker friendly Non-Right to Work States. And that
wasn’t all.
He
compared the two taking seven common markers used to measure standard
of living – per capita GDP, poverty rates, the cost of health insurance,
unemployment, home
ownership, income gap and life expectancy.
He
found that there was no significant difference in three of the markers -
unemployment, rate of home ownership and the income gap.
However,
Right to Work states also scored lower than non-Right to Work states on
the other four. Their per capita GDP of Right to Work states was 13%
lower, health
insurance was more expensive, poverty rates were higher and life
expectancy was lower.
Why?
Minor
says it is difficult to determine cause and effect with absolute
certainty but he says the data indicates that there is a 95% probability
that the difference
is Unions.
Right to Work states have fewer unions. Fewer unions means lower wages.
If you’d like to see more of Darrell Minor click on the Video tab.
Tomorrow
we’ll feature an interview with a teacher who took a 25% pay cut when
he moved from a non-Right to Work state to a Right to Work state.
