Fact- checking Rauner’s claim that right- to- work Texas ismore friendly to union jobs than Illinois

A“THERE’S MORE UNION JOBS GROWING IN TEXAS, WHICH IS A RIGHT- TO- WORK STATE, THAN IN ILLINOIS AND FACTORYWORKERS MAKE MORE MONEY IN TEXAS THAN THEY DO IN ILLINOIS.”

t a recent forum, Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner claimed falsely that the state couldn’t give away, let alone sell, a shuttered auto plant in downstate Normal “because our regulations are so hostile to business and our taxes are so high.”

In fact, Rauner’s own administration last year lured a new tenant.

That misrepresentation sparked a lot of controversy, but something else the governor said at the forum also caught our attention. He claimed laid- off Mitsubishi workers, all union members, told him they were moving to Texas. Rauner then segued into a claim that union jobs were growing faster in

GOV. BRUCE RAUNER, on May 11 at a policy forum

that right- to- work state than in Illinois and pay for factory workers was higher.

In a narrow sense, data on union worker employment bear that out.

In 2017, Texas added more than 80,000 union jobs while Illinois added more than 15,000, according to Unionstats. com, which tracks federal employment numbers for organized labor. Other federal data show Texas manufacturing workers, the closest approximation to Rauner’s use of “factory workers,” make about $ 100 a week more on average than those in Illinois.

Labor experts, however, cautioned that comparing hard jobs numbers between two states so dissimilar in size and economy is like comparing apples to grapefruits.

Michael Hicks, an economics professor at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, said Texas’ gains in manufacturing employment are largely a byproduct of its booming energy sector, an artifact of geological luck that Illinois can’t match.

“When you’re a state like Texas that’s growing manufacturing, industrial jobs— natural gas, pipelines, refineries— those jobs are likely to be unionized and they’re going to be expanding,” said Hicks, who tracks job trends in the Midwest. Energy jobs also pay more than other manufacturing jobs.

And Robert Bruno, director of the labor education program at the University of Illinois Urbana- Champaign, said scale is important to bear in mind: Texas has more than twice the population of Illinois and more than twice the workforce.

If Texas is adding more union jobs, he said, its because it’s adding more jobs period, not because it’s more union friendly.

Indeed, less than 5 percent of the total Texas workforce is comprised of union members, a share no higher than a decade ago despite growth in the number of union jobs, according to Unionstats. In Illinois, the comparable figure was 15 percent.

“Your chance of finding a union job is going to be much greater in a state that has twice the percentage of union employers, twice the percent of union members and one half the size of the labor force than if you jump into this enormous pool in Texas,” Bruno said.

Our ruling

Rauner’s claim about union job growth in righttowork Texas exceeding that in Illinois is backed up, in a narrow sense, by federal data. So too is his argument about pay for factory workers, assuming he was using “factory” as a colloquial stand- in for “manufacturing.”

Experts, however, say it’s tricky to make employment comparisons between two states so dissimilar in size and economies.

Illinois couldn’t be Texas if it tried. The Lone Star state is more than twice the size and has grown its manufacturing— and therefore, its union— jobs thanks to a booming economy that’s received a major boost from the oil and gas industry, something Illinois lacks the geography and geology to match.

And despite a stalled economy in Illinois, union workers still make up a much greater share of the state workforce than in Texas. Statistically speaking, the odds of landing a union job are much greater in Illinois.

For those reasons, we rate Rauner’s assertions Half- True.

The Better Government Association runs PolitiFact Illinois, the local arm of the nationally renowned, Pulitzer Prize- winning fact- checking enterprise that rates the truthfulness of statements made by governmental leaders and politicians. To read more, go to bettergov. org/ type/ politifact.