Elana Levin

Here’s to the people that brought you the weekend

The latest from the "We Told You So" Department:

A new study from the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst shows that the worst states to work in based on "terms of average pay, employment opportunities, employee benefits, percentage of low-income workers, fair treatment between genders" and other factors all have one thing in common:

The bottom ranking states are all so-called "Right to Work States" or as we call them, "Right to Work for Less States"-- i.e. states that have laws discouraging unionization and undermining what unions already exist. Louisiana was at the absolute bottom of the list. No wonder so many New Orleans residents were in poverty. (And this study was done BEFORE the hurricane).

Going against that trend, a piece in the NY Post based on the study shows that NY is only coming in #15, because while our wages are higher than most, our cost of living is so high workers can't keep up with it. It also shows that people who want full time work are getting stuck in part-time jobs (probably without any benefits too). As the recent attack on the right to unionize academic workers at NYU, New School and other private university's has shown, even in comparatively union friendly NY, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done.

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Posted at 9:40 AM, Oct 27, 2005 in Employment | Labor
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