In his column today, John Hood writes about the increasing efforts by Big Labor to secure favorable legislation in North Carolina.
I have to clarify one point. John says that in right to work states, workers can’t be coerced into a union. Unfortunately, they can be. The federal National Labor Relations Act still applies in RTW states and it provides that if a majority of workers in a “bargaining unit” want to have representation by a certain union, then that union will be certified — indefinitely — as the exclusive representative of all the workers in the unit. Any dissenters are legally forbidden to negotiate on their own. Such workers don’t have to formally join the union, the Supreme Court has ruled, but if they don’t, they still are required to pay an “agency fee” to it.
Where the right to work statute comes in is this: Workers who refuse to pay the union dues cannot be fired. One of the first things unions usually negotiate in non-RTW states is a union security agreement that requires the employer to terminate workers who won’t pay the dues. Such agreements can’t be enforced in a RTW state, which makes union organizing somewhat less lucrative since some workers may decide not to pay. The union is still their exclusive bargaining representative, though.
Big labor wants to ditch RTW and thereby collect more money. I would like to see us ditch exclusive representation (and the whole majority rule scheme) so that workers decide individually if they want to join a union or not.
