[메모] "right-to-work" laws and unions

※ 발췌 (excerpt):

1. Unions Are Losing Their Decades-Long 'Right-to-Work' Fight (Bloomberg, 16 Feb 2017)

Last year the total share of U.S. workers who belong to a union fell to 10.7 percent, a record low. That number could go a lot lower in the next few years. Following decades of declining membership, unions face an existential crisis as right-to-work laws being pushed at state and federal levels would ban their ability to colllect mandatory fees from the workers they represent, a key source of revenue for organized labor.

Once largely confined to the conservative South, right-to-work is encroaching on unions' longtime strongholds in the North and Midwest and, pending a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, could soon cover a majority of the unionized workforce in the U.S. Following a 47-year lull, six states in five years have passed right-to-work laws. "The South is clearly winning this particular civil war," says University of California at Santa Barbara historian Nelson Lichtenstein.

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2. Right-to-work law (Wikipedia)

Right-wo-work laws are statutes in 28 U.S. states that prohiit union security agreements. Under these laws employees in unionized workplaces may not be compelled to join a union, nor compelled to pay for any part of the cost of union representation.

According to the Legal Defense Foundation, right to work laws prohibit union security agreements, or agreements between employers and labor unions, that govern the extent to which an established union can require employees' membership, payment of union dues, or fees as a condition of employment, either before or after hiring. ( ... ... )


3. 'Right-wo-Work' Laws Explained, Debunked And Demystified (Rick Ungar | Forbes, Dec 2012)

( ... ... ) Let's begin by noting that many Americans continue to believe that unionism is based around the concept of the 'close shop'─an agreement between an employer and the union representing the employer's workers requiring that the employers hire ^only^ labor union members or, if nonmembers are employed, they must become of the union within a stated period of time or lose their job.

Not true.  ( ... ... )

4. What right-to-work laws really mean (Elizabeth G. Olson | Fortune, Jan 31, 2012)

( ... ... ) In a peculiarly American way of adopting names that can be contrary to what they can mean, proponents called their effort "right to work." At first glance, this "seems to be a declaration that there is a right to have a job," notes Dan Graff, a professor with the Higgins Labor Study Program at the University of Notre Dame, who has studied the impact of such a law in Indiana.

"This country has a different definition of this phrase than everyone else in the world," he says. "The phrase is deliberately meant to confuse. A Texas newspaper columnist started calling it that decades ago, and it was picked up to mean working without having to be a member of a unin."

Almost half of all states already have such laws, with a concentration in the Sun Belt, a region that has a less than friendly history with unions. ( ... ) but unexpected success of curbing collective bargaining rights in Wisconsin has fueled voices to give corporations a free, or freer, hand in the workplace.  ( ... ... )