Right-to-Work revisited

Abstract

This paper uses synthetic controls to reevaluate the passage of Right-to-Work legislation in several states and its effect on union density levels in those states. Building upon recent work, we include data from several new legislative changes and also pool evidence across events to increase the inferential power for detecting a common effect. This adds to the literature by expanding the number of states investigated as well as allowing for more robust statistical testing on the impact of Right-to-Work. We estimate that modern Right-to-Work laws have a statistically significant effect and precipitated union density declines of about two to three percentage points.