Advocates and opponents of right-to-work laws — which allow workers to decide whether to pay union dues — fall on opposite sides in declaring whether the laws help or hinder state economies and individual workers.

But they agree the issue is getting closer to Ohio.

With Michigan’s legislature approving a right-to-work bill for public- and private-sector employees, the issue has new significance for Ohio. Last winter, Indiana approved its own status as a right-to-work state. If Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder signs the bill — and he has promised he will — Ohio will be a neighbor to two right-to-work states.

Jared Rodriguez, president of the West Michigan Policy Forum, said Caterpillar in March opened a locomotive plant in Muncie, Ind. while it closed an older locomotive plant in Ontario. Rodriguez attributes that to Indiana approving to its own right-to-work regimen this year. (Caterpillar Logistics operates a distribution center in Clayton, where it employs about 600.)

Both sides agree on one point: It can be tricky to isolate a state’s right-to-work status as a factor in a state’s growth or failure to grow.

“We’re not going to say that that’s the only thing that matters,” said Greg Lawson, policy analyst for the conservative-leaning Buckeye Institute, which favors right-to-work laws. “That would be way too simplistic and just not true.”

“Many factors affect the ability and willingness of a firm to locate in a particular state,” said Marick Masters, director of Labor@Wayne at Michigan’s Wayne State University, who believes right-to-work laws weaken worker protections.

Those economic variables include a state’s available workforce, transportation network, tax structure, geography, weather, presence of customers and other companies, and much more, both sides say.

But labor cost is also a factor businesses consider in weighing where to move operations, said Robert Premus, a Wright State University economics professor.

“One of the things companies like to do is get in a lower-cost environment,” Premus said.

From January 1990 to October 2012, nearly 12.5 million jobs were created in right-to-work states versus 7.9 million jobs created in “forced unionization” states, Lawson said.

“You have to look and see where the jobs have been created,” he said.

Premus agrees that right-to-work states generally grow faster. “Overall, I think workers benefit from economic growth,” he said.

Masters said research shows that right-to-work laws lead to lower wages, weaker health care and retirement benefits and a higher occurrence of accidents and even fatalities on the job. He fears what the law would mean for workers in Michigan, where 17.5 percent of workers are unionized, according to the Wall Street Journal.

“I think it’s bad news for Michigan and bad news for the labor movement,” Masters said.

James Winship, executive director of the Dayton-Miami Valley AFL-CIO, deals with the heads of 15 companies in his role as president of Local 755 of the International Union of Electronic Workers and Communication Workers of America. He said he has never had a CEO tell him that a union stood in the way of business or expansion plans.

“Not one time have I been told that,” Winship said.

What works for labor-management relations is an attitude of cooperation, he said.

“They come to us and say, ‘Hey, guys, we need to work on this.’ And we work on it,” Winship said.