Speaker 1: Michigan did repeal their right to work law after a
decade of having it be in place. The Democrats took
the House by one vote and the Senate by one
vote and had a Democrat governor in Gretchen Whitmer. And
on the first day of the legislator session when they convened,
they introduced to build a repeal right to work. So
workers now in Michigan are forced to pay union neuser
fees in order to keep their jobs.
Speaker 2: It's outrageous. We'll continue to fight.
Speaker 3: You are listening to Carrie Lutz's Financial Survival Network, where
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Speaker 4: And welcome. You are listening to the Financial Survival Network.
I'm your host, Carrie Lutz. They've got interesting guests to
you for you today and we're going to be talking
about labor issues in the country. Is the Republican Party
about to head off of a cliff? Social Security union?
Is keeping teleworkers in their contract for four years. But
I don't believe that's going to hold because DOJE is
going to blow right through them. Mark Mixed National Right
to Work Committee. Mark, great to have you on the show.
You know, Trump and the Republican Party, it's become the
party of the working man, and yet a lot of
what he wants to do, certainly in the government well
government worker I've always thought was a bit of an oxymoron,
shall we say, or a contradiction in terms. But this
thing of letting them tele a work which means no
work for four years, how is that going to hold up?
Speaker 1: Well, Kerrie, look, thanks for the opportunity to come talk
to you about all this stuff. You're right, it's kind
of an interesting realignment that we're seeing politically, this idea
that the Republicans now are the representatives of the working class.
But one thing that remains clear, Carrie, is when you
think about, you know, labor, we talk about labor, we
misinform people and misdefine what labor is. When you're talking
about labor, you need to make sure you're talking about
American workers as opposed to union officials. The separation is
dramatic and getting wider all the time between the union
officials on one hand, and the rank and file workers
they claim to represent. There's a growing chasm ideologically politically,
however you might define it, between union officials and workers.
So Donald Trump won the hearts and minds of the
American working class by talking about a secure border, smaller government,
you know, enforcing laws against crime, keeping boys out of girls,
restrooms and locker rooms and out of sports, things like that.
Speaker 2: That attracted you know, common sense voters. Union officials, on
the other.
Speaker 1: Hand, continue to push for this collectivism that's been damaging
and has had significant impact on the economy and other things.
And carry to your point, you know, Joe Biden, as
a partying gift to the American Federation of Government Employees,
agreed to a contract that allows the Social Security Administration workers,
forty nine thousand of them, to continue working remotely over
the next five years.
Speaker 2: But I think you're right. I think there'll be a
challenge to that.
Speaker 1: I think Elon Musk and the vak Ramaswami has something
to say about it, and I.
Speaker 2: Know you do too.
Speaker 4: So yeah, well, I think it's absurd that they can
work from home. I mean, you know, there might be
certain instances and certain classes of employees who can work
from home, but people that you need to supervise on
a day to day basis, who are making decisions here
that are very important to the individuals involved. How do
you let those people work from home?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you shouldn't.
Speaker 1: I mean they you know, we're only using according to
Senator Joony Ernstavaiawa, we're only using about ten percent. And
there was a Federal Network News Service Network survey only
ten percent of the leases and the operation buildings in
DC are being utilized right now. And we're paying like
seven billion dollars a year to lease them or to
operate these buildings and they're only being ten percent utilized.
Speaker 2: Something's wrong with that picture.
Speaker 1: And as a tax payer and as a citizen, we
ought to be very very concerned about that. To your point,
you know, the efficiency and the effectiveness of government, I
think is predicated on their ability to be supervised. To
your point, Carrie, I mean, look, we may think that
the human nature says, yeah, I'll work hard, but I
suspect that we're not as efficient and we're not as
effective as a government by letting you know, ninety percent
of the workers or whatever it is. I mean I
know the unions and CNN and the Washington Post and
others have defended this saying, yeah, well, it's not as
big as you problem as you think, but your point
about efficiency, effectness and being able to manage really gets
hurt and gets hit hard when a large percentage of
workers are working from home.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So, I mean, I like the hybrid idea of
them working, you know, one or two days a week
at home, as long as they could be monitored defectively
and you know they're actually doing what they're supposed to do,
because there's benefits for employees when you give them that
flexibility and hopefully they return the return the favor in
increased productivity. There's a lot of I mean, my daughter
and the son in law both full time remote workers
for big corporations, and I know that they work their
butts off.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a bottom line there, Carrie. Somebody's paying attention
to their work for sure.
Speaker 1: And when you think about like the VA, the Treasury Department, HUD,
the Labor Department, the Education Department, they still haven't gotten
back to fifty percent on site workforces yet, even though
the Biden administration and the Chief of staff there, Jeff
Zenz or whatever his name is, basically send a letter
to all these agencies had said you're not doing your job.
Speaker 2: Get those people back in the office.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is just as recently as a couple
months ago, when we're still what four years outside of
the COVID pandemic that led to all this. So there's
a lot that still has to happen. I think to
your point, Musk and Ramaswami are going to have something
to say about it.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, Carrie, there's going to be litigation. The unions will
bring lawsuits because all of this remote work.
Speaker 1: For example, the American Federation of Government Employees represents allegedly
eight hundred thousand federal workers, and all of their contracts
contain a requirement that you bargain over any changes to
remote work policy.
Speaker 2: So they'll be litigation for sure.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, it's going to be interesting to see because
a lot of those people they want to get rid
of anyway.
Speaker 1: Right, Well, I think so one of the things they're
saying is that probably we could reduce the size of
government fairly significantly and still get the same productivity and
the same results from a government to smaller And I
don't have any particular opinion about that, other than to
believe it by people who work it there look at
government and say, yeah, there's some efficiencies that can be made.
And anybody, whether it be Republican or Democrat, that says
you can't cut anything out of government is lying to us.
Speaker 2: Carrie, we know that lying to us.
Speaker 4: For sure, for sure, and I reckon. And there's all
these useless agencies. It's all part of the Washington issue here, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Indeed, you know when you think about the mayor
of Philadelphia demanding that all of the government workers in
Philadelphia come back because she knows what it's doing to
the local economy, the restaurants and the shops downtown in Philadelphia. MARYL.
Speaker 1: Bowser, the mayor of DC, has issued an edict that
everyone has to come back to work, and she's asking
the federal government to make sure they get a one
hundred percent compliance with people working in buildings because now
these little mom and pop businesses down in Washington, d C.
That relied on that foot traffic every day for lunch
or breakfast or coffee, those people are really really hurting.
Speaker 2: So there's a whole bunch of different issues that fold
into this.
Speaker 1: But the most important thing, and I think the thing
that I get concerned about is the actual monopoly power
that union officials have in the public sector. In the
government sector, you know, it was Franklin Roosevelt carry back
to our conversation briefly at the beginning about the nineteen
thirties in labor policy, he was asked about the unionization
of government, and he.
Speaker 2: Said, it's unthinkable.
Speaker 1: It's intolerable that you would organize unions in government because
they're not the same as the private sector. That is
so obvious to anyone who understands economics one oh one
that the idea of putting a private organization in between
elected officials and people that vote for those elected officials
and giving them privileges above ordinary citizens is something that
really has been detrimental. And you look at the states
that do this quote really well California, New York, Illinois,
New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, where basically unions control sixty
or seventy percent of the government workforce. Those states are
literally hovering on the abyss of financial destruction because of
these decisions.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Nevada is also one of those states too, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they've made promises too. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So so how does this get resolved here? Like
your organization, A lot of states have passed right to
work laws, but now they're in the midst of trying
to roll them back, like in place like Wisconsin, right.
Speaker 2: Yep, yeah, that's right, and Nevada.
Speaker 1: There's been talk about it in Nevada and Arizona and Wisconsin.
Michigan did repeal their right to work law after a
decade of having it be in place. The Democrats took
the House by one vote and the Senate by one
vote and had a Democrat governor in Gretchen Whitmer, and
on the first day of the legislative session when they convened,
they introduced the bill a repeal right to work. So
workers now in Michigan are forced to pay union deus
or fees in order to keep their jobs.
Speaker 2: It's outrageous. We'll continue to fight it.
Speaker 1: I think one of the most important battles though, to
your point carry talking coming back to the government sector,
is states can actually roll back the power of government unions,
and hopefully the federal government will do the same thing.
I don't think the Republicans in the US Senate or
the US House have any appetite for this because they
like the money that comes in. They don't want to
upset you know, these large lobbies that have literally hundreds
of millions of dollars to spend on politics. The Democrats
would do it, They would increase government power dramatically. Union
of Republicans just say, well, if we just do it
gradually over time and just take a finger and a
hand and an arm and an elbow and a shoulder
and we don't get any vital organs, we can probably
get away with this stuff.
Speaker 2: And that's kind of what's happening.
Speaker 1: But I think one of the narratives of this next
four years is going to be reducing the number and
size of the federal government. And I think that'll trickle
down to the states too, because I don't think the
financial situation for many of the states is going to
be improving and carry. I know you'd know more about that,
but literally, the state of California, the state of Illinois,
the state of New York, they are again on the
precipice of a financial disaster.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah. The only thing that staved it off, I
guess was the COVID aid that the god from DC
and that's all gone now, and now they're left looking
for the next grift. And in the meantime, state like
New York, where I used to live, Wall Street's moving
to Florida. I mean, Miammi is now the financial capital
of the United States. It's shifted from New York almost overnight.
Nobody noticed it, But I noticed it ten years ago
when I moved down here, that hedge funds were gradually
moving operations here to avoid taxes, regulation and for other reasons.
That prime that these cities have become unmanageable. And the pathogen,
the woke mind virus that was sweeping New York. I mean,
it's made the place unlivable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, those equality of life issues are pretty important.
One thing we do know about the right to work
stage carry is that they have magnets for new manufacturing
job growth and new economic development and new investment in
capital in states like Texas and Florida, and you know,
Idaho and Wyoming and Arizona, and the right to work
states around the country because of to your point, that
kind of regulatory environment and the idea that it's it's
easier to do business in a state that basically takes
care of people and understands the importance of bringing investment,
bringing economic development, bringing capital to states like they've done
in Florida, and certainly Wall Street's a big part of that.
And we've seen that a lot of you know, hedge
fund people actually ask questions about labor policy as they're
looking at investing in companies, and we're seeing more and
more of that, and we're seeing a Boulder kind of
CEO culture that actually makes the point about mentioning.
Speaker 2: You know, look, we found we want to take care
of our employees.
Speaker 1: We don't want a third party in between our employees
and us, and that brings the question of you know,
union accountability. One of the things the simple things that
are right to work law does is it gives the
work the power to hold a union official accountable if
the union officials are stealing their money, if they're doing politics,
or they disagree with workers can say, you know what,
I'm not going to pay for this anymore. And in
right to workstates, they have that right to do that,
forcing them states if you don't pay, you lose your job.
So that's an attractive part of some of this move
that we're seeing, and it's not just because they have
air conditioning in the South.
Speaker 2: Now, it's because they have better policies.
Speaker 4: Well, just to give you for example, in Florida, the
latest budget was one hundred and sixteen point five billion.
In New York it was two hundred and twenty nine billion.
Florida now has a roughly twenty percent higher population than
New York, although we don't know it could be even
higher than that after the next census. New York's population
has been static. Florida's manages to run the state. You know,
we can argue about how well any state is run.
There were fifty percent less. So the point is, we
have no income tax in Florida, so therefore it's a
it's limited how much they could take. They get toll roads,
they get higher closing costs, real estate taxes might be
higher in certain instances, but basically, by any measure of
Florida is better run than New York.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I would guess, and I don't know this,
but I guess the total tax burden is significantly less
in Florida than it would be California, notwithstanding the user
fees and some of the other issues with real estate taxes.
Speaker 2: I would guess that'd be the case.
Speaker 1: But then again, you're right, creating an environment where you
where you accept capital, you accept investment, you accept, you know,
these opportunities to grow and to help people feed their
families and and you know, increase their cost their their
standard of living.
Speaker 2: That's happening across the country.
Speaker 1: To your point about the next census, We've estimated, based
on just preliminary numbers that we're looking at, that the
right to work states will gain somewhere between thirteen and
fourteen new electoral votes because of the population shifts to
those states that have these policies intact.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, no doubt. Yeah. Like for sure, Florida is
ranked kind of in the middle and total tax burden
to the lower, but by every measure, Florida is better
run than any of these failing states. Florida is not
a failing state. I mean, it's got a rainy day
fund of some twenty billion. We have our issues here, obviously,
the insurance issue, storms the illegal immigration issue. We have
a lot of problems, just like Texas, like any state,
any country, right, every country in the world. I mean,
I don't know where this panacea is. I've been looking
for it my whole life. I haven't been able to
find it yet, but.
Speaker 2: If you find it, let me know, would you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, Connecticut's effective tax rate is fifteen point
four percent according to the Tax Foundation, and that was
in twenty two. I assume that they haven't changed very much.
Florida is only nine point one, but you go to
a place like Wyoming, it's seven point five. California thirteen
point five. New York is sixteen percent. So we see
all these numbers here. They don't mean anything unless you're
the one getting taxed, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: We actually take the tax Foundation data and we do
a comparison cheam right to work states and non right
to work states, and I think the latest data set
that we've looked at shows that you have fulfilled your
tax obligations about three and a half weeks earlier in
right to work states the non right to work state.
So that means that you get an extra three and
a half weeks of pay for disposable income because you've
settled up your tax burden with the government three weeks
three and a half weeks earlier than states that have
forest unionism.
Speaker 4: Hey, going to hear something funny, You know what state
has the lowest effective tax burden.
Speaker 2: Ah, do my dear gash.
Speaker 1: Let's see, I'll give me, give me three seconds and
I will come up with no answer. Go ahead, Alaska
of all plays Alaska. Yeah, well that's because think of
those severance taxes on energy. Everyone get j a shack
for like ten grand a year or whatever it is, right, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean what the current Adminton did to Alaska with
resource projects that they want as clean energy but they
won't license copper minds. Go figure. Wyoming is number two
and Tennessee is number three. Florida is number eleven, which
isn't that bad in the scheme of things.
Speaker 1: But yeah, anyway, I think I think Alaska is a
better place, or excuse me, Florida is a better place
to live in Alaska.
Speaker 2: There are many people that argue with me on that.
Speaker 4: But maybe you certainly in the winter, certainly in the
winter that's the case. In the summer, maybe not so much. Mark,
tell us how we find you, how we connect with
you on the web?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can find that. We have two operations.
Speaker 1: One we have a legal Defense Foundation that does nothing
but help employees exercise their rights under the law. That's
the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation that is
nrtw dot org, NRQW dot org. And then the committee
where we do our legislative work both in Congress and
in all fifty states is the National Right to Work
Committee NRTWC dot org.
Speaker 2: RTWC dot org.
Speaker 4: All right links in the show notes this interview on
Financial Survival Network dot com. But just ask that if
you go to the site, please sign up for your
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And if you've got a question from Mark myself kl
at Carrie Lutz, that's the email address. Mark really appreciate
your stopping by. Talk to you again soon.
Speaker 2: Thanks, Kerriy appreciate the opportunity.
Speaker 3: Thanks for listening to Carrie Lutz's Financial Survival Network your
solution to today's trying times. For the latest, go to
Financial Survivalnetwork dot com. Financial Survival Network now more than ever,