Right-to-work laws do not aim to provide general guarantee of employment to people seeking work, but rather are a government regulation of the contractual agreements between employers and labor unions that prevents them from excluding non-union workers, or requiring employees to pay a fee to unions that have negotiated the labor contract all the employees work under.
The following states are right-to-work states:
- Alabama
- Arizona
- Arkansas
- Florida
- Georgia
- Idaho
- Indiana
- Iowa
- Kansas
- Louisiana
- Michigan
- Mississippi
- Nebraska
- Nevada
- North Carolina
- North Dakota
- Oklahoma
- South Carolina
- South Dakota
- Tennessee
- Texas
- Utah
- Virginia
- Wyoming--> as of 2012, Michigan and Indiana have been added to the list.
A similar arrangement to the union shop is the agency shop, under which employees must pay the equivalent of union dues, but need not formally join such union.
For the most part, Right-to-work States have lower wage jurisdictions that the other States and are very attractive to companies who are trying to avoid having to pay high union wages.
At-will employment is a term used in U.S. labor law for contractual relationships in which an employee can be dismissed by an employer for any reason (that is, without having to establish "just cause" for termination), and without warning.
When an employee is acknowledged as being hired "at will", courts deny the employee any claim for loss resulting from the dismissal. The rule is justified by its proponents on the basis that an employee may be similarly entitled to leave his or her job without reason or warning. In contrast, the practice is seen as unjust by those who view the employment relationship as characterized by inequality of bargaining power.
At-will employment gradually became the default rule under the common law of the employment contract in most states during the late 19th century, and was endorsed by the U.S. Supreme Court during the Lochner era, when members of the U.S. judiciary consciously sought to prevent government regulation of labor markets.
Over the 20th century, many states modified the rule by adding an increasing number of exceptions, or by changing the default expectations in the employment contract altogether. In workplaces with a trade union recognized for purposes of collective bargaining, and in many public sector jobs, the normal standard for dismissal is that the employer must have a "just cause".
Otherwise, subject to statutory rights (particularly the discrimination prohibitions under the Civil Rights Act), most states adhere to the general principle that employer and employee may contract for the dismissal protection they choose.
At-will employment remains controversial, and remains a central topic of debate in the study of law and economics, especially with regard to the macroeconomic efficiency of allowing employers to summarily and arbitrarily terminate employees.
I personally have been involved in 4 AT WILL terminations, one of which came at the hands of a Christian University which could not provide any evidence to support their termination of me.
For your information, all states recognize at-will employment.
Those States that have both Employee at Will and Right to Work laws on the books have clearly put the employee in an AT RISK situation who work within their boarders.
So, what can these employees do to protect themselves and their families and their careers?
On the surface, there does not seem like much can be done but there is power collectively. That is not to say that I am endorsing or suggesting Unions as a possible solution.
But, they tend to protect the employee while acquiring higher salaries and/or wages. However, my take on Unions is that they breakdown the work so incrementally that I can foresee needing a union man to turn on and off an office light switch and then at least one more standing by making sure that switch flipper did it correctly and with the correct finger on the correct hand. LOL
Seriously, I talked with an electrician who was in a union (down south) who told me that on every job that required working on a power box, that another union electrician had to be standing by watching not just to make sure it was done correctly but also in case there were problems.
This person also told me that whenever he was watched, it was always done by done who was senior to him in tenure where the wage the watcher was receiving could be twice as high as his. Plus, he informed me that there was not really any need for this person and oftentimes this person would disappear after he started the job and not return until it was almost time to quit for the day.
I asked him why not report these people. He smiled and said that if he reported it, he would not be given any work from that point on, so he wanted to work and kept his mouth shut.
Both the worker and the watcher got paid union wages no matter how long that particular task lasted.
I went to graduate school with an Executive from a top utility company who said that it was very difficult to terminate a union employee and that everyone that he tried to terminate took him a file box full of paper documentation in order to satisfy Union requirements. He speculated that Unions intentionally made it difficult to deter management from moving in this direction.
He shared with me that his college educated linemen were all union and they made that they (the employee) and they (the employer) followed the guidelines exactly and would oftentimes quote word-for-word what they could or could not do with every particular job which would typically cut their daily productivity by 50%.
Bear in mind that when people share union stories, they typically share only those that are not normal or that fall into the category of 20% of the time, knowing that 80% of the time, there are no problems other than having to pay higher wages.
Situation like this or simply higher union wages put employers and businesses who must employ union workers in situations where those costs could put the company in jeopardy of being domestically and globally competitively.
Either way companies want to proceed with their work getting done that is to say hire union workers or have employees at will, a canyon of separation will always exist between management and labor as a result of this decision, and that canyon will inevitably lead to animosity, discontent, and contempt in the minds of the survivors on both sides: management and labor.
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