Workers deserve a national ‘right-to-work’ law

The “right to work” principle is simple: No worker should be forced to join or pay dues to a union just to get or keep a job.

Twenty-seven states have right-to-work laws, five of which were passed in the last nine years.

In 2018, the Supreme Court handed down its landmark Janus decision, which declared it unconstitutional to force government workers to pay union dues or fees, giving right-to-work protections to every public-sector worker.

Unfortunately, that still leaves millions of private-sector workers trapped under forced unionism in the 23 states that haven’t passed right-to-work laws.

Forced unionism is made possible by two federal laws, the National Labor Relations Act and the Railway Labor Act.

The NLRA was amended to give individual states the option to pass right-to-work laws protecting workers from forced union dues. No such option exists for the RLA, meaning railway and airline workers can be forced to pay union dues even in right-to-work states.

To end compulsory union financial support across the country, Sens. Rand Paul and Joe Wilson introduced a simple, one-page bill, the National Right to Work Act, which doesn’t add a single word to federal law. It simply repeals the forced dues authorization language in the NLRA and RLA.

The National Right to Work Act would make union financial support strictly voluntary for every public- and private-sector worker in America.

That’s good news for the workers currently trapped under forced unionism, but it’s also good news for the whole economy. Right-to-work states outpace their forced unionism counterparts in almost every aspect of economic growth.

The increase in people employed in right-to-work states is more than four times the rate of those in forced unionism states, according to an analysis of government data by the National Institute for Labor Relations Research.

People want to live and work in right-to-work states. In the decade after 2009, forced unionism states lost 7.4% of their residents aged 35 to 54, while right-to-work states saw an increase among that age group.

It’s no wonder polls consistently show that more than 80% of Americans support the right-to-work principle that no worker should be forced to pay union dues as a condition of employment. Union members, too, overwhelmingly agree.

When union membership and financial support are voluntary, union officials are held accountable by workers who can cut off support if these officials aren’t meeting their needs.

Instead of rising to the challenge and seeking workers’ voluntary support, union bosses continually resort to attacking the right to work. They’ve proposed their own coercive alternative to the National Right to Work Act: the so-called “PRO Act.” This radical, regressive bill grants union bosses a plethora of new powers, including, worst of all, overturning all 27 state right-to-work laws by federal fiat.

Union bosses have made it clear that they do not support workers’ freedom to decide for themselves whether union membership is for them. Congress must reject union bosses’ tyrannical “PRO Act” and pass the National Right to Work Act, ensuring union membership is voluntary, not forced, for every worker in America.

Mark Mix is president of the National Right to Work Committee, a 2.8 million-member organization.

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