Backbencher Mailbox

Wherein I am invited to respond to an attack, only to have my attacker decline to publish me.

Your faithful correspondent is visiting wife and son this week in London and Oxford, working on a freelance piece when not taking in the sights. Among the latter is the Ashmolean Museum, whose wonders include the robes worn by T.E. Lawrence (pictured above) when he famously went native in the Middle East. Lawrence lived in Oxford from the age of 9, and was affiliated with four of its colleges. In Lawrence of Arabia Peter O’Toole, playing Lawrence, says, “I like the desert because it’s clean.” Viewing this arresting getup, I am tempted to rewrite that as, “I like the desert because it’s fly.”

I wasn’t planning to post from England, but Stan Greer, senior research associate for the National Institute for Labor Relations Research, wrote me asking to respond to an op-ed for the Orange County Register in which he called me a “Big Labor propagandist.” I thought he meant that he wanted me to reply for publication, and I figured I couldn’t say no to that. But then Greer told me he never intended for my reply to be published—he just wanted a little adult attention—and that my reply would be in any case unpublishable. Hey asshole, you’re welcome!

If only to establish that I wasn’t a complete fool to take time out of my vacation for this exchange, I reprint it here.

We start with Greer’s attack on me, which is also an attack on a Federal Reserve study that I cited in a recent New Republic piece (“How State Right-to-Work Laws Screw the Working Class”):

[M]any commonly cited analyses of living standards in Right to Work states ignore regional cost-of-living differences completely.  A Federal Reserve sponsored study published early last month by Fed staffers Kabir Dasgupta and Zofsha Merchant is a case in point.

To be blunt, the failure of Dasgupta and Merchant to account for the well-documented fact that living costs during the first decade their Right to Work laws were in effect rose far more slowly in Michigan and Indiana than they did in forced-unionism states collectively invalidates their claim that forced unionism somehow benefits workers economically.

Of course, the flimsiness of this study hasn’t deterred Big Labor propagandists like the New Republic’s Tim Noah from latching on to it as a justification for their ideological aversion to Right to Work.  My question for Noah and company is, if forced unionism is so good for workers, why are they fleeing this system in droves?

Greer’s October 30 message to me:

An op-ed I wrote that was just published in the O[range] C[ounty] Register ends with a question for you. Perhaps you would like to respond.

My reply the morning of Nov. 1:

It isn’t every day that I get called a propagandist by an employee of a Koch-funded propaganda mill. (The National Institute for Labor Relations Research is a unit of the National Right-to-Work Committee, whose function is pretty obviously not to draw attention to the shortcomings of state right-to-work laws.) Mr. Greer deliberately obscures what the Fed study he criticizes was about. It was about wage disparities between right to work states and other states. Wages are lower in right to work states. Mr. Greer’s argument is thus that it’s better to live in a state where you get paid less because the resultant impoverishment, writ large, will lower the cost of living. Mr. Greer doesn’t substantiate this assertion, but I note from public disclosures that he out-earns me, as most propagandists do, quite apart from wherever it is they happen to reside. (I live in Washington, DC and, yes, must by law pay dues or their equivalent to my union, the News Guild, that I don’t begrudge.) 

To substantiate his hypothesis Mr. Greer would have to take a large pay cut, which I don’t recommend no matter where he lives. I think we’ll both of us continue to measure our economic well-being conventionally, according to wages paid, even if that undermines Mr. Greer’s argument.

Greer’s reply to me:

I read the Federal Reserve article [TN note: I never suggested he didn’t], and it was actually about putatively faster pay growth in forced-unionism states, not higher pay, although the two things are obviously connected.

No one claims lower pay causes a lower cost of living.  You made that up.  I supplied a link to Cebula’s article if you want to read what he really said.  If it didn’t make it into the OCR version, I can send it to you.  [TN note: The link is in the OC Register version. I supply it here for the reader’s convenience, but you’ll need access to JSTOR.] Union officials in states like CA admit cost of living needs to be taken into account when comparing pay in different states.  Why can’t you admit it?

And, as I predicted, you refuse the question I asked.  If workers are better off in CA, IL, NY etc. than they are in Right to Work states like FL, TX, NC etc., why do workers keep moving from forced unionism states to Right to Works states?

Thanks for giving your readers an opportunity to read my op-ed.

Me back to Greer:

Even in “forced unionism” states only a fraction of the private sector workforce is unionized. With wage growth stagnating over the past few decades—a circumstance you apparently favor—people have migrated away from high cost-of-living states in search of cheaper cost of living. A right-to-work regime matters little when you don’t likely have a union either in the place you’re leaving or the place you’re moving to. In California, for instance, union density is 16 percent, and that includes public sector workers. When 84 percent of workers are non-union, union status doesn’t likely figure in most people’s life decisions.

Did you post the reply you asked me to furnish?

Greer back to me:

I don’t have a blog where I post replies, and your original “reply” was 90 percent ad hominem anyway.  Why would anyone post that?

You seem to be acknowledging that living standards are lower in forced unionism states than in Right to Work states, but insist forced unionism should be blamed.

You also don’t mention the fact that Big Labor wields exclusive bargaining power over roughly 40 percent of public sector workers nationwide, and therefore has an enormous amount of power over how state and local governments operate.

If elected officials in states like CA and NY promote policies that lower real spendable incomes, then union officials and the policies that grant them inordinate power share the blame.

Me:

I thought you were inviting me to respond for publication. As for “ad hominem,” you called me a propagandist … in print. [TN note: The ellipse eliminates a nonsense phrase (“because n”) inserted by spellcheck.]

I can’t follow your last email, but never mind.

Him:

I really don’t see what’s insulting about “propagandist.”  When somebody calls me that (actually, my own wife does), I  don’t get offended.  What’s so offensive about it?

The substance of what I said negative about you is that you couldn’t answer why workers are fleeing forced-unionism states if they’re better off there than in Right to Work states.

Now you have admitted that workers are worse off in CA than in TX, it seems, but you insist it’s not Big Labor’s fault.  So we’re making progress.

I am glad to have a private discussion with you (like we’re having), but I don’t think you’re going to get space on the NRTWC web site or the NILRR web site!

If you want to respond to me publicly, why don’t you do it in one of your innumerable articles for TNR or whatever other publications you’re writing for nowadays.

I would welcome that.

Please note that I did not say workers are worse off in California than in Texas. I said that when workers migrate from California to Texas, it probably has less to do with their having to pay union dues or their equivalent (given that 84 percent of California’s workforce is non-union) than with their seeking a lower cost of living. I would go further and say the union workers are probably less likely to leave than the non-union workers, since they get paid more. But now I would like to get back to my vacation. I have fallen for Greer’s gambit to get me to publicize his op-ed, but I count it a minor victory that I got him to say he’s proud to be a propagandist. I would feel ashamed to be called such, especially by my own wife.

I also never said this was a private discussion. Greer initiated it by suggesting we were to have a public discussion and then withdrawing the offer because he didn’t like what I said.