Blog

No joy in today's employment report

As foreshadowed earlier in the week, today’s job report confirms that the American economy remains stagnant. From the statement by BLS Commssioner Keith Hall: In May, nonfarm payroll employment changed little (+54,000), following increases that averaged 220,000 in the prior 3 months. The unemployment rate was essentially unchanged, at 9.1 percent, in May.  Employment in […]

Strassel on the Budget

The state legislature has finished work on the 2011-13 budget, but the federal government is still in budget mode.  In her column this week, Kimberley Strassel (our annual dinner speaker this year) asks who is winning the budget war:  By refusing to blink, Republicans keep forcing Democrats to acknowledge a very simple political reality: Voters […]

Workers' compensation agreement reached

The major policy obstacle to ending the special sessions was lifted Sunday when negotiators reached agreement on workers’ compensation reform. It does less than business wanted, arguable much less, and goes further than union leaders deem acceptable. So, by the common standard that a good compromise is one that leaves all parties at least partially […]

House leadership should allow vote on needed workers' comp reform

In my column today, I call on Democratic leaders in the House to bring to the floor legislation that would allow voluntary settlement agreements for workers’ compensation claims. This is not a new theme. An excellent editorial in the Herald of Everett urged the bipartisan majorities in both houses of the Legislature to hold firm […]

NLRB's Boeing complaint generating plenty of heat

The NLRB’s Acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon lodged a complaint alleging the Boeing company’s decision to expand in South Carolina amounted to impermissible retaliation against the union. I wrote about it in this column. Unsurprisingly, the complaint has become a national issue, properly, because of its sweeping consequences. In the Wall Street Journal, Boeing CEO […]

NLRB complaint against Boeing unwarranted

In my column today I consider the NLRB complaint against Boeing. The NLRB acting general counsel filed the complaint, asserting that the company’s decision to open a new production line in South Carolina was impermissible retaliation against the machinists union. I write: The NLRB’s charges are factually inaccurate, unprecedented and contrary to precedent. To support […]

Barone on the "death of the 'defined benefit'"

Last week, we published a brief on reforming public pensions. It’s timely, then, to link to Michael Barone’s column on the last days of the defined benefit pension. This sounds right: Defined benefit policies assume a static society. But we live in a dynamic society, and defined benefit policies cannot keep up with constant change. […]

What's wrong with the NLRB complaint against Boeing's S. Carolina expansion

Plenty. We’ve spent at lot of time at the WRC looking business decision-making and considering how public policies shape the competitive environment for employers. A fundamental premise: Investors and employers have choices. Last week, the National Labor Relations Board filed a complaint against the Boeing Company, alleging that the decision to open a second 787 […]

Moderate Democrats get workers' compensation reform bill moving again

Yesterday’s move by moderate Democrats in the House to amend the bipartisan workers’ compensation reform bill passed by the Senate has revived prospects for legislative success in the waning days of the legislative session. This is an issue the Research Council has followed closely for a long time. Most recently, we published The Time Has […]

Closing tax "loopholes" won't solve the state budget problem

Kriss and I draw on our Clarifying the Role of Tax Preferences policy brief for this article in Crosscut.In both pieces, we point out the state’s already high business tax burden and the importance of tax preferences in offsetting tax pyramiding (multiple taxation of transactions in the production cycle). We also note that many so-called […]