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Tuesday, September 29, 2026

SPOTLIGHT: Tidbytes: (1) State of Working Arizona | Parts taken from KJZZ.org + RELATED CONTENT

State of Working Arizona finds the state excels on minimum wage, falls short on worker rights

KJZZ | By Lauren Gilger Published September 28, 2026 at 1:05 PM MST

Teresa Ghilarducci is a labor economist, author, and professor at The New School for Social Research, where she directs their Wealth Equity Lab.

Right now, she’s a visiting professor at ASU’s Center for Work and Democracy, overseeing their latest project on the State of Working Arizona.

She told me she started the project because there were a lot of reports about how businesses and the economy is doing, but workers are a big part of that picture. So they’re spending the year looking at how workers are doing in our state — from pay to worker protections to health insurance coverage and the employers and their ability to pay workers.

So, how do we stack up? . . ."

IN BRIEF HERE'S A TAKE-AWAY: LAUREN GILGER:

"...Right. But you’ll hear in the state, right, that that the lack of unions — only 4% of workers in the state are unionized, about there — lots of folks here will say that’s a good thing in terms of economics. Like, opponents will say you can’t force people to join a union and pay union fees, they’re against collective bargaining and being required — and that this kind of creates a more business-friendly environment, right? Like, it attracts new businesses, creates more jobs, that kind of thing. I’m guessing you disagree with that, but tell us why.

TERESA GHILARDUCCI:

Yeah. I mean, if it were true that being hostile to unions and being a low-paid state was good for business, then Mississippi would be the richest state in our union.

You know, it turns out the correlations don’t even work.

Places in this country and also in this on this globe that actually have a healthy balance between profits and workers’ pay are among the richest places on the planet.

So, for instance, New York and California probably produce the most productivity of any of our states,

Illinois is up there in terms of just the value added for their own GDP and for the kind of innovation and being leaders in the globe in terms of economic sectors, and they have among the the highest levels of unionization.

LAUREN GILGER: You’ll also argue, right, that there’s an employer case to be made for high work standards for workers.

TERESA GHILARDUCCI: And this is where I put on my hat as an educator. I’m a labor economist. I’ve taught labor economics, you know, for over four decades now.

And so I am deeply in the research on the research question that is probably the oldest in labor economics, which is: What is the relationship between high pay and worker voice and the health of the employer that’s affected, of the industry if many of the employers are organized, and for the health of the economy, for the nation’s economy? And the results are not mixed.

The evidence really points to a strong, positive relationship between high pay, dignity at work, and productivity and profitability for the company. . ."