Concept
In the context of labor law in the United States, the term "right-to-work laws" refers to state laws that prohibit union security agreements between employers and labor unions which require employees who are not union members to contribute to the costs of union representation. Unlike the right to work definition as a human right in international law, U.S. right-to-work laws do not aim to provide a general guarantee of employment to people seeking work but rather guarantee an employee's right to refrain from paying or being a member of a labor union. The 1947 federal Taft–Hartley Act governing private sector employment prohibits the "closed shop" in which employees are required to be members of a union as a condition of employment, but allows the union shop or "agency shop" in which employees pay a fee for the cost of representation without joining the union. Individual U.S. states set their own policies for state and local government employees (i.e. public sector employees). Twenty-eight states have right-to-work policies (either by statutes or by constitutional provision). In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that agency shop arrangements for public sector employees were unconstitutional in the case Janus v. AFSCME. The original use of the term right to work was coined by French socialist leader Louis Blanc before 1848. According to the American Enterprise Institute, the modern usage of the term "right to work" was coined by Dallas Morning News editorial writer William Ruggles in 1941. According to PandoDaily, the modern term was coined by Vance Muse, a Republican Party operative who headed the Christian American Association, an early right-to-work advocacy group, to replace the term "American Plan" after it became associated with the anti-union violence of the First Red Scare. Muse used racial segregationist arguments in advocating for anti-union laws. According to Slate, right-to-work laws are derived from legislation forbidding unions from forcing strikes on workers, as well as from legal principles such as freedom of contract, which sought to prevent passage of laws regulating workplace conditions.