New state senate leader in Missouri to push "right to work for less" legislation

We're a little slow on this story, but one of the first things Missouri's new state Senate president did after the election was to announce he'll push for "right to work for less" laws.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which reported the story last week, noted  that Missouri voters rejected a right-to-work law that had been placed on the ballot in 1978.

In recent years, some business groups have been trying to resurrect it. Those groups, such as Associated Industries of Missouri, helped elect many of the candidates who prevailed on Tuesday, when Republicans won record majorities in both chambers. The GOP will have 106 of the 163 seats in the Missouri House.

Labor groups strongly oppose right-to-work laws, and with a Democrat in the governor's office, the Legislature might have to put the measure on the ballot to bypass a veto from Gov. Jay Nixon.

A concerned reader -- Lonnie Stevans, Associate Professor of Quantitative Methods at Hofstra University -- wrote in to say that his research showed there's no proof that right-to-work states are better for business.

However, there is no difference in the number of business formations between right-to-work and non-right-to-work states. Moreover, being right-to-work yields little or no gain in employment and real economic growth — wages and personal income are lower in right-to-work states.

Prof. Stevans suggests the real reasons people promote "right to work for less" is because of an anti-worker, anti-union mentality.

Amen brother.