Mitt Romney continued his efforts to position himself as the anti-union guy in the GOP 2012 field (or maybe the others just don't think they need to prove it, I don't know), saying, at the Sept. 5 American Principles Project Palmetto Freedom Forum:
“And the right course politically at this stage is to have states carry out their own right-to-work legislation. And as you know, right-to-work states, those 22, have created 3 million jobs over the last 10 years. The union states have lost about half a million jobs. So right to work is the way to go if you want good jobs.”
The Washington Post fact checks this, ultimately giving it a two Pinocchio rating:
Romney’s remarks appeared rooted in actual Labor Department data, even though he spouted some numbers that didn’t match his own analysis. Regardless, the former governor exaggerates the importance of these statistics, and he fails to acknowledge that factors other than labor laws play a role in determining job growth.
The fact check is solid as far as it goes, offering a couple of good rebuttals to Romney's claims about job creation, countering not that RtW states have worse job creation, but that labor law is neither the only nor the decisive factor in job creation. For instance, it cites the Oklahoma example—manufacturing jobs in that state peaked the year before it passed RtW—and the fact that Alaska and Texas, both with oil, one heavily unionized and one RtW, have had roughly the same employment increase over the past 10 years.
But how far it goes pretty much stops with Romney's claims about job creation. There are some passing references to the lower-quality jobs found in RtW states, but it doesn't actually include Romney's claim that RtW leads to "good jobs" in the fact check. But that's worth taking a look at, because the idea that there are jobs and then there are good jobs is an important one.
An EPI study actually linked in the fact check found that, controlling for worker race and education levels as well as state-level factors like cost of living and unemployment:
- Wages are 3.2 percent lower in RtW states.
- "The rate of employer-sponsored health insurance (ESI) is 2.6 percentage points lower in RTW states compared with non-RTW...If workers in non-RTW states were to receive ESI at this lower rate, 2 million fewer workers nationally would be covered."
- "The rate of employer-sponsored pensions is 4.8 percentage points lower in RTW states."
People who are "unemployed" in the way Mitt Romney is—who started out wealthy and are now so wealthy they will never have to work again—may not have to worry about things like lower wages or lower chance of having health care or a pension. But that doesn't mean they can't care. It's just that Mitt Romney doesn't, at least not if caring might get between him and the Republican presidential nomination.