The longtime leader of the National Right to Work Committee died at his home Sunday, just one week shy of his 94th birthday.
Reed E. Larson was a major figure in labor politics and conservative activism, having led a three-decade fight to prevent workers who don’t want to be union members from being forced into one. His efforts laid the groundwork for the recent surge in right-to-work laws, with Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and West Virginia adopting them in the last four years alone.
“Although many Americans may not recognize his name, it would be difficult to overstate his impact on American labor law and the degree to which he made the American workplace a more free place for workers who don’t want to associate with organized labor,” said NRTW spokesman Patrick Semmens.
A common feature of most union-management contracts is a “security clause” that says that as a condition of employment, all workers must join the union or at least pay it a regular fee to cover its expenses.
However, under a 1947 amendment to the National Labor Relations Act, states were allowed to pass laws prohibiting the clauses. That allowed workers to opt out of supporting a union without getting fired, hence the term right-to-work.
Union leaders hate the laws, which are associated with membership losses and depleted treasuries, and argue that the laws allow workers to “free ride” on unions. Advocates such as Larson countered that it should be solely up to the worker whether he supports a union.
Larson’s career as an activist began in 1953, when as president of the Kansas Jaycees he began a drive to get his home state to adopt a right-to-work law.
An initial push was rebuffed when then-Kansas Gov. Fred Hall, a Republican, vetoed legislation in 1955, but Larson led a successful second effort in 1958. At the time, organized labor was at the peak of its power, with an estimated one-third of all private-sector workers belonging to one.
His efforts led to him becoming the first executive vice president of the newly formed NRTW in 1955. During his tenure as leader, the organization became the main group pushing for states to adopt right-to-work laws. It succeeded with five: Mississippi, Louisiana, Wyoming, Idaho and Oklahoma. He also clashed with unions at the federal level and in the courts.
Among Larson’s more notable achievements was securing President Gerald Ford’s veto of 1976 legislation that would have allowed union leaders to halt entire construction projects involving multiple contractors if one of them used non-union labor. The following decade, the group won a major victiory at the Supreme Court with the 1988 Beck ruling, which said that workers cannot be forced to financially support a union’s political campaigns if they object to the candidates or issues labor leaders are backing.
Larson was also an early supporter of 1964 Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater and President Ronald Reagan, for whom he served as an unofficial adviser.
Larson stepped down as the group’s president in 2003 and was replaced by its current president, Mark Mix.
