How will Indiana’s new right-to-work legislation, which ends forced dues payments to unions and closed shops in the private sector, impact the state’s economy?  Mitch Daniels claims in a Fox News interview with Brian Kilmeade today that his phone has been pretty busy since he signed the bill yesterday — and not from Big Labor crank callers.  Business owners have already started looking at relocating to Indiana, a state with a 9.0% jobless rate, making it 38th for employment in December:

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels defended Thursday his state’s newly-approved right-to-work legislation, saying that the phones have been ringing off the hook with companies wanting to come to the state since he signed the measure.

“Indiana has by every reckoning the 5th or 6th best business climate in the country, and now it gets a little better,” said Daniels on Fox News. “The phone began literally ringing yesterday afternoon with companies wanting to come to our state.”

He’s not too concerned with the protests that erupted yesterday, either:

The governor claimed that the voters of the state were with him on the need for right-to-work legislation.

“Noise isn’t numbers, and fewer than 9 percent of Indiana belongs to a union, and many of them do not disagree with the right-to-work principle,” said Daniels. “In the whole state a huge majority believe it is the right thing to do.”

Watch the entire interview below.  Supposedly, the unions want to hold protests to disrupt the Super Bowl, but I fail to see how that will help their argument that unions are good for business.  It would provide unions an opportunity to get their message out on the biggest media day of the year, but if that message is a temper tantrum over no longer being able to pick the pockets of people who don’t want to be in a union, well … good luck selling that with the Super Bowl fans who might still be annoyed over the near-cancellation of the season from union-management issues between millionaires and billionaires.