Passing Right to Work Law: A First Step Toward Making California a Better Place to Work, Live
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Bob Piazza is the president of a high-tech pump manufacturer that has operated successfully in Sonoma, Calif., for 70 years. But not for much longer. As Sonoma Index-Tribune editor Lorna Sheridan reported on April 30, before the end of the year Piazza’s firm, Price Pump, will “pull up stakes and move its headquarters – lock, stock and barrel – to Boise, Idaho.”
Piazza did not make this decision lightly. As he told Sheridan, he has lived all of his 74 years in California, and he and his wife have lived together there for the 53 years they’ve been married. When the firm moves, the Piazzas will have to move to Idaho. “I don’t love change,” he admitted to the Index-Tribune. “But the way things are going, we don’t have a choice.”
He cited California’s heavy tax burden and government “over-regulation” as good reasons to move, but the state’s extraordinarily high cost of living is perhaps the worst problem of all. Just for starters, it makes it extremely difficult for him to fill many positions:
“It’s impossible to hire [entry-level workers] here as [such] workers can’t afford to live here.”
California is one of 22 states that still lack a Right to Work law prohibiting the termination of employees for refusal to pay dues or fees to an unwanted union. The high cost of doing business in California and many other forced-unionism states has nothing to do with high living standards for employees.
In fact, half of Price Pump’s 36 employees have gladly accepted offers from Piazza to make the move with the company to Right to Work Idaho, where they will be able to continue doing the same jobs for the same pay as they are receiving in Sonoma. But a dollar goes much further in the Gem State than it does in the Golden State.
According to data collected and published by the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center, a state government agency, the overall cost for necessities like housing, food, energy, and health care is 53 percent higher in California than it is in Idaho.
One Price Pump employee who lost his house during the Great Recession told Piazza he would be making the move to Idaho because it would “give him a chance to be a homeowner again.” According to Sheridan, a number of Price Pump employees “have been pleased to find that they can buy a house in the Boise area that is comparable to their home in Sonoma for less than half the cost.”
The Index-Tribune quoted the assessment of Quality Assurance Technician Ryan Daley, who along with his wife and another 11 employees made a trip to Boise to see the area in March:
“[My wife and I] agreed that the Boise area would be a fantastic place to raise our young family and keep the American dream alive. Our quality of life will improve.”
It is regulation-happy, tax-hiking politicians, installed in office and kept in power by Big Labor’s forced dues-fueled political machine, who are primarily responsible for the high cost of living and doing business in California.
A September 2017 editorial appearing in southern California’s Orange County Register focused on the public policies fostering high housing costs: “zoning restrictions that limit the amount of developable land; ... high development impact fees, overly strict building codes and labor rules that drive up the cost of building; abuses of the California Environmental Quality Act that delay or kill development altogether … .”
If elected officials in the Golden State want to stop the hemorrhaging of good-paying jobs to Right to Work states like Idaho, they need to make their state more hospitable to private-sector employees and business owners.
And passage of a Right to Work law prohibiting the termination of employees for refusal to join or pay dues to an unwanted union is an absolutely necessary first step towards making California a better place to work and hire employees of all educational backgrounds and skill levels.
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Buh bye. Race to the bottom for low wages and no benefits.
Yee haw.
I lived in Fl and I believe they had a right to work law there although we knew it as the right to fire at will law.
It was known as that because employers didnt need a reason to fire any one at any time with no notice.
If your boss's grand kid now needed your job.... 10..15 years of service meant nothing to some employers.
to add to it some employers required employees to sign a no compete agreement that dis-allowed and made illegal for an ex-employee to work in the same job for any other company in the county for like up to two years. .... WTF !! ...
I actually knew a guy that got sued for breaking one of these no compete contracts. and
I had an employer try that on me as a trained person starting with them, I redid his contract omitting the part about dis-allowing future employment in the county, signed it and returned it telling him it this was version was acceptable I was ready to start work.
I told him I was coming to him fully trained in my field and if it didn't work out I was not willing to give up my home or my profession and IF he really needed that in the contract he needed to find a different employee. He read it, and agreed to my contract (which was the same as his minus the ex-employment section.)
I worked for that company for 11 years and was respected the entire time. In fact it was one of the best companies I ever worked for. (Perhaps because I was respected.)
As you can probably guess, I'm no fan of right to work states. At least not the ones at that time in FL. ... there was NO job security.
right to work laws are the first step to legalized serf status
you want to be a serf or have some power as a group?
It seems to me that Unions have been in decline for a while. It's not so difficult to bust/break a union anyway, and Union's are correctly tied with organized crime quite often. We certainly need better worker protections that are also far less political/corrupt than unions.
Looks like they are doing something right. A strong economy, no wonder repubs hate it.