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Comment by mdavis6890 | Hacker News Reader

(American here) This is not about a right to unionize - of course workers have a right to unionize. This is about laws which force employees to join a union if they want to work in a particular business or industry. There are many laws in many parts of our country which restrict my ability to work in a given job or industry unless I join a union.

As an employee, I prefer to have the right to choose whether to join a union or not, but many folks don't want me to have that choice.

As an example, if this warehouse votes to unionize, will I still be able to work there without joining the union if I don't want to? No, I will be forced to join or leave.

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> This is about laws which force employees to join a union

There are no laws forcing employees to join a union.

Some businesses might enter into contracts with their employees. Right-to-work states attempt to put restrictions on that freedom of contract by making certain contracts illegal for businesses to accept.

There is no right to employment, businesses can fire you for reason outside of any explicitly encoded wrongful termination reason.

IANAL, but it seems that until Janus V. AFSCME three years ago, it was legal to "require bargaining unit employees to pay union dues or an agency fee". So while those employees could decline to join the union they still had to pay for it. They were not forced to join but that just meant that they didn't get a vote yet were still bound by the result.

Yes, it is legal for employers to enter into a voluntary contract requiring their employees to join a union or pay agency fees.

Right-to-work proposes to ban private businesses from proposing or entering into such a contract. But there is no law requiring employees to join a union.

Yes, but you've got the framing wrong: The issue is that employees who don't join the union are essentially "benefit freeloaders." The union employs people to negotiates wages and benefits and manage the union itself on behalf of all the employees, even those who aren't paying union dues. If everyone can opt out of paying for the union, then the union can't sustain itself.

Having a unionized workplace is a bit like having a democratic government – in the U.S., we're born and become citizens of the U.S. government and all that comes with that. We can't "opt out" unless we move out of the country and renounce our citizenship. We still have to pay taxes and we get all the benefits of our government (safety, education, roads, etc.) even if we don't want to – you can't just not pay taxes, right?

If you don't want to join a union workplace, just find a non-union workplace. If you don't want to join a new union, vote against it and find another job if they accept the union? That's more choice than you get with being a citizen of a country where you pay taxes! (And usually, union dues are less than the negotiated benefit/wage increases anyway.)

> And usually, union dues are less than the negotiated benefit/wage increases anyway

Almost always as a rule they are. You are not going to get people to vote for a union security clause that decreases net pay.

None of this negates what the parent said.

They are saying that non-union workers are bound by the union's decision and have to pay into it.

You are saying that this is a good thing.

>> There are no laws forcing employees to join a union.

There are actually lots of legally binding agreements that do just this, so the fact that the law is used to enforce an agreement vs. the law directly stating it doesn't really have much material difference.

First - they would only have to pay agency fees.

Second - employment is at-will, if you no longer agree with the contract you are free to quit at any time.

The law is not forcing employees to join a union, the private business entered into a contract with a security clause. "Right-to-work" is around banning businesses from entering into certain voluntary agreements. It has nothing to do with laws requiring employees to join a union, as no such law exists.

There are also lots of legally binding agreements that require that I pay more than $1500 per month in rent. The law can be used to enforce these agreements. Even still, the claim that "This is about laws which force [tenants to pay a minimum rent if they want to live in a particular location]" would be silly. I think the metaphor holds and GGPs claim is equally silly.

> There are no laws forcing employees to join a union.

There absolutely are states where certain trades must be performed by union employees. My company almost got into an expensive legal battle because the locale we were working in required union contractors for electrical work. The union claimed our payroll staff (IT) violated local union laws because the union saw them running ethernet cables which constituted "low voltage" work, something the union was supposed to do. This shutdown the jobsite for our staff while the union and our company sorted things out.

> There are many laws in many parts of our country which restrict my ability to work in a given job or industry unless I join a union.

This law is called basic contract law. A company can agree to only hire via a union just like a university can agree to only sell Pepsi products.

> I prefer to have the right to choose whether to join a union or not

I prefer to have the right to choose whether I am under my management structure or not. I suppose someone could say one can go somewhere else, but that would apply to a company with an exclusive union contract as well.

In the US, you are never forced to join a union. The Taft-Hartley act of 1947 banned so-called "closed shops" at the federal level.

> The Taft–Hartley Act outlawed the closed shop in the United States in 1947. The union shop was ruled illegal by the Supreme Court.

From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_shop#United_States

With the important caveat that you can be charged agency fees.

In some states.

So you can be forced to pay dues but you don't have to be approved by the union.

They might be banned but they certainly exist.

As a supermarket cashier I was told in no uncertain terms that I had to join the union as a condition of employment. No union, no job.

Because the supermarket decided to contract with the union and the two sides negotiated that provision. The company made that decision. Not the legislature.

The legislature made the decision that the supermarket is required to bargain (in good faith) with the union. Not doing so would be "unfair labor practices". This includes a lot of practices, including not being able to "Lock out employees over a permissive subject of bargaining" or "[...] require agreement on a permissive subject as a precondition to further bargaining" - https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/the-law/ba...

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