By: A Worker in the US South

If the National Labor Relations Act was the “carrot” for state unionism in the US, the Taft-Hartley Act, passed in 1947, was the stick. It aimed to put limits on the legally-recognized powers of the state unions; included in the act was the right for states to pass right-to-work laws. Right-to-work laws are one of the primary legal battles state unions claim to want to fight; currently, 26 out of 50 states in the United States have right-to-work laws. Many workers do not understand what these laws mean and this is used by state unions to blame their failures in these states on right-to-work laws. State unions also use this as a way to discourage independent unions, arguing that in right-to-work states, unions need vast resources and an army of lawyers at their beck and call if they are to be able to organize.

In North Carolina, a right-to-work state where just 2.4% of workers are in unions, Chapter 95, Article 10 of the NC General Statutes states: “The right to live includes the right to work. The exercise of the right to work must be protected and maintained free from undue restraints and coercion. It is hereby declared to be the public policy of North Carolina that the right of persons to work shall not be denied or abridged on account of membership or nonmembership in any labor union or labor organization or association.”

While the language is different in other states, the essence remains the same. Simply put, right-to-work laws make it so that in unionized workplaces, workers have the ability to choose whether or not they want to join the union, unlike in other states where workers can be obligatorily added onto union rolls once they are hired. Under our current conditions with state unions that are rife with class collaborationists, this may sound like a progressive policy. However, it was designed by certain sections of the ruling class in an effort to diminish the legal power of unions by reducing union membership and liquidating what are called “union shops”.

Right-to-work laws do not excuse the failures of state unions, who have been using them to rationalize their utter lack of success in organizing new workplaces, along with the collapse of union membership and union shops, in right-to-work states over the past sixty years. In the history of the labor movement, workers have organized under much harsher conditions. In 1933, when the system of state concessions to the labor movement was much less developed, over 1.2 million workers went on strike, and there were a reported 1,700 strikes. Hundreds of thousands of workers who went on strike that year were from the Southern United States, where the labor movement experienced significantly higher and more violent repression than it does today. In comparison, in 2023, despite the US total population almost tripling since the 1930s, only 458,900 workers went on strike in 466 strikes. Of these less than 50,000 workers went on strike in the South, where right-to-work laws are the most prevalent.

This is not because workers in these states are content with their conditions or are hopelessly backward. It is due to decades of class collaboration, sell-out contracts, failed organizing efforts, and little shop floor presence from the state unions. In fact, in right-to-work states in recent years, workers have taken action in defiance of repressive legislation and sell-out union leadership. In 2020, hundreds of warehouse workers in Memphis launched a spontaneous strike after a coworker of their’s got COVID-19, and in 2021, UPS workers in Charlotte had an impromptu walkout over poor working conditions in disregard of Teamsters’ leadership. In 2018, 20,000 teachers in West Virginia launched a wildcat strike in defiance of the law and their sell-out union leadership, which spread to Kentucky and Oklahoma, two other right-to-work states, and then spawned a whole movement nationwide before it was co-opted and destroyed by the establishment education unions. There are countless other examples in just the last decade of workers taking action without concern for legality and independent of state union bureaucrats in right-to-work states. Yet the state unions and their cheerleaders on the so-called “left” continue to use right-to-work laws to explain away the continued decline of the establishment labor movement in these states over this time period.

UPS workers in North Carolina have reported the complete disregard that Teamsters leadership has for its rank and file in several New Day at UPS editions. In the 5th edition, which contains a report on Teamsters Local 71 in Charlotte, North Carolina, it states: “Filing grievances against supervisors who harass workers accomplishes nothing—the union cannot even get workers moved to other work areas. In 2019, when [Willie] Ford was elected, he promised his leadership would ensure Local 71 members are being informed. At the West Charlotte UPS hub, since December, the union has had a representative outside the building exactly one time. Inside the building, Teamsters’ bulletin boards sit unchanged for long periods of time. Workers find it difficult to contact their steward, with most not even knowing who their steward is.” Workers in countless other union shops have reported similar stories, and it is this sort of negligence and betrayal by union bureaucrats that leads many workers in right-to-work states to leave or not join the state unions.

While this article obviously does not advocate for right-to-work laws, the reality is that even if they were struck down tomorrow, it would not change the fact that the establishment labor movement is incapable of leading and building power for the working class. In California and New York, two states which have never had right-to-work laws, the trend of drastic union membership decline has also not been curbed. In New York, the union membership rate has dropped from 36% in 1964 to 21% in 2024, and in California, it’s worse, having been cut in more than half since 1964 when it stood at 33%, dropping to 14.5% in 2024.

Often reactionary labor law is pitched by liberals, and union bureaucrats, as only being tied to the Republican party. This lie is something that was utilized by many liberals and self-professed “socialists” to try to beg workers to vote for Kamala Harris and other Democrats in the 2024 elections, claiming that the Democrats would protect the labor movement from the reactionary labor laws of the Republicans. This is simply not true. States such as New York and Massachusetts which for years have had Democratic Party control over all branches of state government outright ban public sector employees from striking. In 2022, Joe Biden with the support of the Democratic Party—including members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)—voted to bar railroad workers from striking and enforce an unpopular contract that met none of the demands put forward by the rail workers. These measures take away legal protections for workers to use their most powerful weapon, withholding their labor through a strike. Without any threat of a strike, companies are able to force through contracts that further serve their interests with the aid of the sellout union leaders. While the Republicans undermine the very existence of labor unions through plainly repressive measures, the Democrats instead work to undermine them by converting them into toothless NGO-style benefit societies tied to their electoral machinery. Instead of being a leading force in the “guerilla fights between labor and capital” and “organized agencies for superseding the very system of wage labour” [Section 5, Resolutions of First I.W.A. Congress Assembled at Geneva, September, 1866] the trade unions are legislated by the Democrats into an adjunct of the bourgeoisie, responsible for deflecting legal responsibility away from individual companies and acting as enforcers-for-hire in maintaining substandard conditions and pay.

Neither Democrats nor Republicans offer a way out for the working class; both parties ultimately utilize slightly different tactics to suppress and weaken the labor movement. Ruling class politicians and state unions are attempting to lead the working class on a path to nowhere. Overcoming reactionary labor laws such as “right to work” or bans on public sector workers striking can only come through the construction of a militant class-conscious labor movement that puts power in the hands of the working class instead of union bureaucrats.