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Originally Posted by spence
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What difference does it make to Minnesota's DOT? If it needs infrastructure done, there will surely be companies, including Hoffman's, who already had contracts there, who will bid for the work. Having Hoffman expand his presence there does not expand the amount of infrastructure. Same for Wisconsin's DOT. If Hoffman wants to maintain contracts in WI, he still can. If he doesn't, there are other companies who will. Whatever infrastructure is needed will be done in either state regardless of Right To Work law or not. And each state will accept the bids they consider to be best for their budgets.
The real difference, if one emerges, will be in private businesses which do not contract with the state government.
A couple of Hoffman's comments were curious to me:
He says that RTW law would make it more difficult to gain skilled workers. How so? If he's willing to pay what the workers are worth, that should not be a problem. If he is more concerned with having to be competitive, with having a set union rate so he doesn't have to compete with other companies to get the best, most skilled workers, then I understand his concern. But RTW will merely make it easier for other companies who are willing to pay more than he is to get the best workers. Win/win. The competitive companies get the best workers, and the employees get the pay they "deserve."
He says that RTW would create tension among his employees. So, in other words, if everyone belongs to the union there is no tension among them? I recall being a union member in both public and private jobs where there was friction, either overt, but usually unspoken and sometimes bitter, between the more productive and least productive workers. It would seem to me, that in a RTW place, the more hostile tension would come from union members resentment against the non-union employees. If they all wanted to keep their job, regardless of what type of workplace, union, non-union, RTW, they would have to keep their tensions to themselves and just do their job. Hoffman seems to be a stick-in-the-mud, unprogressive, semi or totally tyrannical "boss" who is more concerned with his own comfort than the well-being of ALL of his employees. Would he be able to run a company if there were no unions? Maybe the "tension" he is more concerned with is that which arises between him and his employees, and the union is a buffer against that.
I think the real difference, ultimately between RTW and unionized states will be in the private sector where the real competition exists. As Jim in CT says, that remains to be seen.