Our Chairman of the Board, Andre Lacy, offers convincing commentary for Inside INdiana Business outlining how Right-to-Work laws would truly benefit Indiana.

We recommend you take a look at the column in its entirety, but here are some highlights:

In a 2002 study entitled “The Effect of Right-to-Work Laws on Economic Development,” economist William T. Wilson of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy compared Michigan’s economic performance to right-to-work states. Wilson found that during the 30 years between 1970 and 2000, RTW states created jobs nearly twice as fast as did Michigan. While poverty rates dropped dramatically during these 30 years, Michigan was one of seven states (all lacking right-to-work laws) that witnessed an increase in the percentage of residents living in poverty. Finally, the study showed that right-to-work states created 1.43 million manufacturing jobs, while non-right-to-work states lost 2.18 million manufacturing jobs during the same three decades …

There are practical reasons for Indiana to adopt a right-to-work law. First, Hoosiers agree with it. An overwhelming majority – 71 percent – favored or strongly favored right to work in a 2007 statewide survey conducted for the Chamber’s Indiana Business for Responsive Government. There is also the broader moral question of whether a Hoosier breadwinner should be forced to join and/or pay dues to a labor organization to get or keep a job.

"Our education system is dead. It’s propped up by unions, bureaucracy and schools of education."

That’s the take of former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who will be the keynote speaker at the Indiana Chamber’s 19th Annual Awards Dinner on November 6.

At a speech before local and state elected officials earlier this year, Gingrich also offered:

• An automatic college scholarship for each year that a student graduates early from high school
• Dual credit programs. In Selma, Alabama, 32 of 65 high school graduates also received associate degrees along with their high school diplomas. Gingrich: "That is the beginning of the future."
• Abolish state curriculums and get rid of departments of education
• All states should have an outside review panel look at the costs of higher education
• The current system will "never fix the pile of federal bureaucracy on top of state bureaucracy on top of regional bureacracy on top of local bureaucracy."

Gingrich is coming to town. You don’t want to miss him.