Indiana State Capitol (Daniel Schwen)
With a so-called right to work bill dead in New Hampshire, the fight moves to Indiana, where Republican legislators have said that passing the anti-union measure is their top priority and the American Legislative Exchange Council has ridden into town to help them accomplish it.
The AFL-CIO has polled Indiana on right to work, finding that:
[S]upport among Hoosier voters for the controversial union busting bill is weak, with just 38 percent favoring its passage while 47 percent stand in opposition. The survey also finds that 67 percent of Hoosiers disagree with Statehouse Republicans decision to make “right to work” their top priority and wish they would move on to other issues. [...]
The poll also found that among self-identified Republicans only 59 percent support the bill, well below the level of support one would expect for their top legislative priority, and considerably weaker than the 72 percent opposition among Democrats.
The AFL-CIO poll, conducted by Hart Research, asked:
Experts say that a Right to Work law would result in many fewer Indiana workers having union representation, as is the case in other states with these laws such as Tennessee, Alabama, and Arkansas. Do you agree that passing a Right to Work law should be the legislature's top priority, or do you feel other issues are more important?
It then followed up in the same language, asking, "And do you strongly favor, somewhat favor, somewhat oppose, or strongly oppose passing a Right to Work law that would result in many fewer Indiana workers having union representation?"
Republicans countered with a poll that's such garbage that the Times of Northwest Indiana essentially called it out:
But [House Speaker Brian] Bosma said a poll of Hoosiers by the House Republican Campaign Committee shows 65 percent support a right-to-work law and only 28 percent oppose it. [...]
The differences in support for right-to-work between the two polls may be based on Bosma's polling definition of right-to-work as a law that ensures "a worker cannot be required to join a labor union or pay labor union dues in order to get or keep a job."
Federal law has prohibited that kind of mandatory union membership since 1947, and no American worker can be required to pay union dues.
So to get poll respondents to support their bill, Republicans said it would do something that existing law already does. Quite the vote of confidence in the popularity of their top priority!