I am against right to work laws; I see them as intentionally destructive to cohesion in the work place. As for who works in the south, the south has been the favorite of auto manufacturers because of anti union sentiment that dates before the Civil war; it's purely political and has everything to do with 'northern aggression'. Lower wages and benefits are another reason, that you have pointed out, but more education on the part of line force will never raise wags and benefits down there: the fact is fear is the motivator against any concerns for upward scale living. Unions have zero to do with who's employable and who;s not. Union people are sent away and fired all the time for unemployable reasons. My own union had guys with "lived at the hiring hall" as we'd say; they did lousy work, they went out for the day's wages only and none of us wanted them on our docks. They were the first to get "do not send letters" from the employers to the hall.
Right to work laws have nefarious ends in mind. If you want the proof, just look at the sate of labor and the income gap and temporary work world that exists today.
Well, the laws are certainly destructive to cohesion.
I get the anti-union sentiment, but to say that it is the result of Civil War era resentments is really a stretch. Most unions were very short lived before 1881. The presence of slave labor certainly precluded the need for most unions anyway and the population of the south was much more rural and less organized by nature, so I don't see the connection.
Lower wages are probably more related to a lower cost of living as anything else. Imagine if you could build a car in a location for $10000 and the workers have the same purchasing power as a another location in which a car is built for $15000. The foreign car manufacturers realized this and moved in once domestic manufacturers' labor prices shot through the roof as a result of unsustainable wage and benefit growth in the 1980's and 90's. Pay market value for wages in the south which are lower than those in the north and price your cars to sell.
Unsustainable healthcare, pensions and wages basically drove the US auto manufacturers to the brink in the 2000's as the dollar lost value and foreign companies moved their manufacturing here, along with their vastly better R&D, quality design and assembly.
Please tell me, do you wish for:
a) open borders which further drives down wages?
b) increased wages which increases prices of manufactured goods?
c) union-negotiated wages and benefits which create unsustainable costs for manufacturers.
d) tariffs which artificially increase the cost of foreign manufactured goods thereby increasing costs for everyone
e) goods manufactured at a lower cost in RTW states and sold for a reasonable cost.
I realize you have a tie to the unions, and no-one says they have not been a huge benefit to the working class. However, the first rule of bureaucracy is "Thou shalt grow and gain influence..." At some point that growth and influence causes the system to collapse upon itself and then it is ripe to return. Until then, the south keeps gaining manufacturing jobs and the wealth gap keeps climbing in the blue areas.