Passing right-to-work legislation in New Hampshire would be a boon to the state’s economy, in part thanks to its political geography. It would also uphold the Granite State’s Live Free or Die principles.
That was the case made by a panel of right-to-work advocates Tuesday night at a “Policy and Pints” event in Windham, N.H., hosted by the free market group Americans For Prosperity-New Hampshire.
State Rep. Daniel Popovici-Muller (R-Windham) is a lead sponsor of the legislation, which is one of the top priorities of House Republican leadership for the upcoming session. An immigrant from Romania, Popovici-Muller says that, for him, it’s first and foremost an issue of individual liberty.
“It’s all about freedom of choice. When you go work, you should have the freedom to choose whether you want to be represented by a union or not,” he said.
“It’s about the people who do not want to be part of the union that are currently forced to be represented by and to pay fees for services they never asked for. So to me, it’s a clear case of making the state better by giving everybody more freedom to make the choices that are right for them.”
Members of public sector unions like the New Hampshire State Employees Union are covered by the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in the 2018 Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) case. The court declared that public sector employees cannot be forced to pay union fees or join a union as a condition of employment.
Panelists (from left) Greg Moore, Drew Cline and Rep. Daniel Popovici-Muller address AFP panel on December 10, 2024.
But workers in private sector unions, sometimes referred to as trade unions, do not have that freedom.
According to the National Right-to-Work Legal Defense Fund, 27 states are currently “right-to-work” states. Not a single state on the East Coast north of West Virginia has passed right-to-work legislation. And according to panelist Drew Cline of the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy, this is part of the opportunity for the Granite State.
Citing a 2021 Harvard University study, Cline said passing right-to-work laws increased manufacturing as a share of employment, higher overall employment, and an increase in labor force participation. The study also found “locations with RTW laws have seen higher population growth, and on net attract commuters from non-RTW locations. These labor market effects also spill over into socioeconomic outcomes; RTW laws are also associated with lower childhood poverty rates and greater upward mobility.”
Cline noted that those are the effects on current right-to-work states, many of which are in the South or West and border other right-to-work communities. That would not be the case in New Hampshire.
“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 argued.
It’s hardly a surprise that free market groups like the Josiah Bartlett Center and AFP back the right-to-work effort. It’s also true that AFP Action, the group’s political arm, helped defeat some right-to-work opponents in this year’s New Hampshire legislative primaries. With a GOP supermajority in the state Senate and a 222-178 advantage in the House, passing the bill shouldn’t be a problem. But in the past, Republicans have seen their support for the bill evaporate when it came time to count votes.
On the positive side, incoming Gov. Kelly Ayotte (R) has indicated she would sign the legislation if it reaches her desk. On the downside, the new Senate President Sharon Carson (R-Londonderry) is a diehard opponent, having broken with her party at least twice as the lone GOP opponent to right to work legislation in recent years. Now she controls the gavel.
Both AFP’s Greg Moore and Rep. Popovici-Muller were cautiously optimistic Tuesday night about the odds that right to work legislation would reach Ayotte’s desk in the upcoming session.
“One thing about the New Hampshire House, as all the members here who’ve been in office for more than one term know, is that it’s always a crap shoot,” Moore said. “Right-to-work passed the House in 2011. It passed the House in 2015. It passed the Senate in 2017 and in 2020. We’ve just got to get all the parts together at the same time.”
Popovici-Muller called it “a coin flip, which is a heck of an upgrade over last year because we’ve gained about 20 seats. We have the best shot in about 10 years to actually have this signed into law.”
