In January of last year, we asked our Ohio Economic Experts Panel about what the impacts of a “right-to-work” law might be in Ohio. Right-to-work laws prevent unions or employers from mandating union membership. The tradeoff here is that union bargaining power is reduced in order to lower barriers to entry for new employees. The economists we surveyed thought at the time that right-to-work would likely increase inequality, and they were split on whether or not it would increase overall employment.
Much of the conversation around right-to-work laws focuses on the employment impact. It’s why advocates use the name right-to-work. However, unions are responsible for negotiating all aspects of a work environment.
That is why a recent paper published in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, authors Rania Gihleb, Osea Giuntella, and Jian Qi Tan from the University of Pittsburgh explored the impact that right-to-work laws have on other aspects of employment.
In particular, this paper focuses on the impact that right-to-work laws have on long working hours. Long working hours have been shown to have negative effects for employees, including increased risk of injury in the workplace.
By using a stacked difference-in-differences approach, these researchers determined that right-to-work laws led to a 6% increase in the proportion of workers who worked long hours. This effect was concentrated in industries that are characterized by higher unionization rates, such as construction and manufacturing.
Other industries with lower unionization rates such as education and public administration showed less of an effect on the proportion of workers working long hours, and instead exhibited an increased likelihood of non-standard working hours.
I found this paper interesting because it is an important reminder of the fact that policy changes can have extremely far reaching impacts. Even though much of the debate on right-to-work is focused on employment and wages, we need to be aware of what the whole range of impacts might be.
At its core, right-to-work laws are about how much power unions have, and unions are involved in a lot more than just wages and employment.
I’ve written in the past about the unintended consequences that some policies can have, but I would argue that these types of unintended consequences are not the same. In that previous blog post, I talked about college admissions and employment for people with criminal records. In both cases, there was an unexpected change in behavior that reduced the effectiveness of those policies.
In the case of right-to-work and its impact on long hours, it is an issue of not looking closely enough at the expected outcomes. A thorough policy analysis will miss an unexpected outcome (this is why program evaluation is important), but it should always let us know about the expected outcomes. If someone took the time to perform a full cost-benefit analysis of right-to-work, we might find lots of impacts on all of the aspects of work that unions are able to negotiate. Policymakers who care about creating the best outcomes for their constituents should care about policy analysis.