Yesterday evening, Kentucky’s newly Republican-led state House passed a right-to-work law, which would prevent the compulsory collection of union dues from unwilling employees as a condition of keeping their jobs.
The bill, sought after by business groups in the state for decades, had been long resisted by Democrats. Now, it could pass the state Senate as soon as tomorrow, and if it did it could become law before President Obama even leaves office.
Union leaders are not happy about this at all. Activists were on hand to boo Kentucky’s Republican Gov. Matt Bevin for testifying in support of the law on Wednesday, and to jeer legislators for passing it on Thursday.
Kentucky would become the 27th right-to-work state, and the fifth to pass such a law while Obama was president, after Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, and West Virginia. Given the precedent-busting efforts by the Obama administration (and especially his appointees on the National Labor Relations Board) to enhance union power and leverage, it’s little wonder that so many states have taken this approach to spare their businesses some of the negative consequences.
After Kentucky, Missouri is considered almost a sure-thing to pass right-to-work this year. New Hampshire, the Wall Street Journal notes, could follow suit, although the law’s chances there are less clear in that state.
State right-to-work laws, which Congress allowed for in the 1940s, don’t impede workers from unionizing. But they do end the free ride that union leadership typically gets in states where dues payments can be forced on all employees in a given workplace or unit. They also give workers the chance to quit unions they might never have wanted. In 2015, the year Wisconsin’s right-to-work law passed, union membership fell from nearly 12 percent to just above 8 percent of the state’s workforce.
