this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2024
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B-but you can quit your job at any time!
And the only repercussion is adding more difficulty to an already arduous job search by having to explain why you did not list your previous employer as a reference.
Surely that privilege outweighs the tradeoff of allowing businesses to abuse and fire you whenever they feel like it for no reason at all and with no negative repercussion for them when doing so.
You're thinking of at-will employment.
At-will: Able to quit/be fired without notice for any reason, other than membership in a protected class
Right to work: Able to work without joining a union
You probably aren't intentionally doing it, but you are somewhat repeating a propaganda line from the anti-union side.
It is against federal law (Taft-hartley act) for a closed shop to exist, meaning that there is no state where you can be forced to join a union to work in a specific job.
This creates the "free-rider" problem where someone who doesn't join the union still benefits from the collective bargaining. In states that don't have right to work, the union can collect "agency fees" from those non-union employees to cover just the benefits that they are receiving, while giving nothing else to the union.
Right to work outlaws this practice, so that free-riders get the benefits of the union without any fees.
There is some disagreement between unions and the anti-union people on whether unions are required to provide "duty of fair representation" to non-members. It's a mix of law, policy, and precedent, so it is a little unclear, but I would side with what the NLRB says on it.
Your union has the duty to represent all employees - whether members of the union or not.
Some anti-union people advocate for changing that, which sounds good, but the actual effect would be that businesses would pay non-union members less, saving themselves money, so they would choose to only hire non-union employees.
You're right, got wires mixed up.