NASHVILLE — Proponents of the Nov. 8 ballot measure seeking to make Tennessee’s decades-old “right to work” law a part of the state constitution say polling they commissioned shows a majority of voters back the provision, which appears on the ballot as Amendment 1.
Yes on Amendment 1 committee officials released the survey of 500 likely voters late last week in advance of early voting in the election, which began Wednesday. Conducted by Cygnal, the poll says 58% of those surveyed said they plan to vote to make Tennessee’s 73-year-old law — which allows workers to opt out of paying union dues while working at a unionized company that has employee bargaining and worker protections — a part of the state constitution.
“The Tennessee Chamber and our members across the state are pleased about the results of a recent poll showing almost 60% of Tennesseans supported the Vote Yes on 1 initiative to enshrine right to work into our state constitution,” Tennessee Chamber President and CEO Bradley Jackson said Wednesday in an email to the Chattanooga Times Free Press. “The results are clear that Tennessee voters support right to work, which ensures all employees are free to decide if they want to join and pay dues toward any organization.”
The poll also found 22% of those surveyed were opposed to making the state’s “right to work” law part of the Tennessee Constitution, while another 20% were undecided.
Tennessee’s constitution sets a high hurdle for an amendment to be adopted. The first step is the amendment must get more yes votes than no votes. The second is that the number of yes votes must be a majority of the total votes in the gubernatorial election.
Early voting kicked off across Tennessee on Wednesday and continues through Nov. 3, excluding Sundays.
The Yes on 1 effort is supported by the state’s top business associations. Former Republican Gov. Bill Haslam as well as current Gov. Bill Lee, also a Republican, have been designated as leaders. Haslam is serving as treasurer. Both men have given $25,000 each to the effort to promote the amendment.
The poll, conducted Oct. 5-7, has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.34%. Cygnal is a polling and survey research firm and says on its website that it services “center-right” clients, including consultants, caucuses, committees, political groups, associations and independent expenditure and advocacy organizations. It also works with small- and mid-size corporations on employee satisfaction, customer sentiment and market research surveys. Cygnal’s work has a B+ rating from FiveThirtyEight, which tracks polling firms’ work.
State labor leaders oppose the amendment. Tennessee AFL-CIO President Billy Dycus questions why it’s being pushed with state law already declaring it unlawful for any employer or organization to deny or attempt to deny employment to any person by reason of the person’s membership in, affiliation with, resignation from or refusal to join or affiliate with any labor union or employee organization of any kind.
“First off, I don’t know how the questions were posed,” Dycus said in a phone interview Wednesday when asked about the survey. “If I was guessing, it was slanted” to indicate Tennesseans could be forced to join a union, which he noted is not the case.
Dycus said the phrase “right to work” itself is misleading.
“The true meaning of ‘right to work’ is, it is not a privilege to go to work. It is the ability of someone who works where there is a collective bargaining agreement to not pay dues to the union. That’s all right to work means,” Dycus said. “The Yes on 1 group is good at saying that it gives you the freedom to not be forced to pay unions. In the end, that freedom already exists under the National Labor Relations Act.”
The labor leader also noted that the percentages of Tennesseans saying they supported the state’s “right to work” law declined slightly from a survey done by labor a few years ago.
The Times Free Press asked the Amendment 1 campaign for a list of poll questions and the order in which they were asked but did not receive a response by press time.
Tennessee has low levels of union participation compared to national figures, which are pegged at 10.3%, according to federal data. In January, a U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics release on affiliation of employed wage and salary workers by state said that 145,000 workers, 5.2% of the workforce, belonged to a union. The number rose to 166,000 or 5.9% for workers represented by unions.
In Chattanooga, the United Auto Workers union’s efforts to organize the Volkswagen Chattanooga plant have twice failed — most recently in 2019, when Lee urged VW workers to reject the union in a nonpublic address.
“The workers have spoken, and I think they spoke well on their own behalf, they didn’t need someone else speaking for them,” Lee told reporters not long after the vote.
He said he believed workers “made the right decision, and I’m certain that will be the decision they have in the years ahead.”
But the same union plans to make an effort to unionize the new $5.8 billion Ford Motor Co. electric vehicle plant, which is being built in rural West Tennessee as a result of Lee’s efforts.
John Rogers, Cygnal’s director of client strategy, wrote in a polling memo the survey shows Tennessee voters “overwhelmingly favor passage” of Amendment 1, and the support “holds true across partisan lines and education and income levels.”
“Crucially,” Rogers added, “among voters who say they ‘always’ vote on state constitutional amendments and ballot initiatives, support is even higher.”
That was pegged at 60%, a 2 percentage point increase in support. Opposition, meanwhile, also increased by 2 percentage points to 24%. Fifty-nine percent of Republicans and 59% of Democrats said they plan to vote yes, as did 56% of independents.
Fifty-nine percent of voters earning under $50,000 annually said they supported the amendment, as did 55% of middle-income earners making between $50,000 to $99,000 a year. Sixty-one percent of voters making $100,000 a year or more said they plan to vote yes.
Known registered voters, weighted as likely general election voters, were surveyed via interactive voice response telephone and short messaging service polling, a web-based service that allows people to vote by text message.
Contact Andy Sher at asher@timesfreepress.com or 615-255-0550. Follow him on Twitter @AndySher1.