It was ‘Charlie Brown and the football’ once again for Republicans and right-to-work legislation — if Charlie Brown landed in front of a lawnmower.
On Thursday, the GOP-controlled House voted overwhelmingly to indefinitely postpone HB238, the right-to-work legislation aggressively promoted by Americans For Prosperity New Hampshire and long touted by pro-business Republicans.
The magnitude of the GOP defeat is in the math. In 2021, Republicans had a 213-187 House majority and lost the vote on a right-to-work bill 199 to 175, with 20 GOP members breaking rank.
Today, Republicans enjoy a 221-177-1 majority, and they lost 200-180, with 25 Republicans voting no.
Democrats and union supporters were ecstatic. Their victory set off such a raucous response that Speaker Sherm Packard (R-Londonderry) had to loudly gavel the House back into order.
“A beautiful morning to be in solidarity with the workers of New Hampshire against a bad labor bill (right-to-work for less),” SEA/SEIU Political Director Cullen Tiernan posted on social media. “So proud to see the bipartisan vote against the bill.”
The scale of the defeat left many Republican right-to-work supporters stunned and angry. Several noted that Gov. Kelly Ayotte’s budget address, delivered just minutes before the vote, mentioned bail reform, education freedom and banning cellphones in classrooms — but not right to work.
“She could see the writing on the wall,” one GOP insider speculated.
AFP and the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy have pounded away at the economics of the right-to-work issue, pointing to studies showing worker freedom tends to correlate to increased economic activity and job growth. And, Drew Cline with the Josiah Bartlett Center argued at a recent right-to-work roundtable, the impact would be amplified if New Hampshire became the only right-to-work state in the Northeast.
“You have to drive from here down to West Virginia to get to a (right to work) state. If we are the only one in the Northeast, the benefits we could expect to come would be even more pronounced,” Cline said.
But opponents like Rep. Stephen Pearson (R-Derry) made the case before Thursday’s vote that the new, Trump-inspired Republican Party is very different from the libertarian-leaning, Chamber of Commerce GOP of the past. He argued it would alienate union members and their families, many who just recently moved toward the Republican Party.
“This bill is a pointless attack on American families,” Pearson said. “Right to work is a concept of hollow, unfulfilled promises.”
It’s also possible that the right-to-work movement is a victim of success: the state’s strong economy—with plenty of jobs for skilled workers in a tight labor—and the success of the worker-freedom movement. Private-sector union membership is below six percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In New Hampshire, it’s closer to nine percent, but it’s still the least unionized state in New England by far.
Supporters of right to work repeatedly remind workers that the law doesn’t ban unions, it only blocks their ability to force workers to join.
“Compulsory union payments violate worker rights,” said House Majority Leader Jason Osborne in a recent op-ed for NHJournal. “Every worker, regardless of their profession, deserves the right to decide where their money goes without government-backed coercion.”
The House rejected this argument.
“Lawmakers recognized this effort for what it was: an attempt by out-of-state billionaires to hijack our legislative process so they could force a harmful anti-worker agenda down our throats,” said Jeff Padellaro, secretary-treasurer of Teamster Local 633. “This was nothing but an attack on working families and we are proud to have stopped it.”
