Reason Writers Around Town: Shikha Dalmia on the Future of Right to Work After Indiana

After a 10-year hiatus, Indiana became the 23rd state in the country to embrace a right-to-work law that will ban union bosses from coercing workers in closed-shop companies to pay dues. Reason Foundation Senior Analyst Shikha Dalmia examines in her column at The Daily what this means for the future of the law. Big Labor is livid and will do everything to stop it from spreading to other states. As in the past, it'll try to scare the GOP establishment with dire political consequences. But, she notes:

Indiana's law will go down in history as the watershed moment that decisively stemmed the awesome power that Big Labor has exerted on American politics for about a century…

First, unions are in a depleted state after fending off attacks in Indiana, Wisconsin and Ohio. They may no longer be able to fight effectively on new fronts…

 Second, anemic growth and state budgets saddled with public employee legacy costs have shifted opinion in a pro-right-to-work direction. In Michigan, the union epicenter, the issue has been drawing over 50 percent support for a while.  

But, above all, Indiana will both intensify the competitive pressure on its neighbors and offer lessons that they can't ignore…

Read the whole thing here.