In late March, Michigan became the first state in 58 years to repeal its “right-to-work” law. As Republican-led states loosen child labor laws and Democrats in Congress anticipate another congressional rebuff of their proposed labor legislation, Michigan pointed the way toward a different political future for workers’ rights and Democratic politics.
In a state with a rich history of industrial unionism, the newly flipped Michigan government now in Democratic control repealed the state’s right-to-work law, which was passed under Republican control in 2012. This represents a major victory for labor — one that could be replicated in other states.
Looking back at how what conservatives call right-to-work laws spread across states in the first place offers important lessons to organized labor about how it can ensure that Michigan’s repeal does not become a one-off win. After all, right-to-work laws, like many other forms of antilabor legislation, began at the state level. And if labor advocates invest in local elections, state-level unions and politicians from the working class, these laws that have limited working-class collective politics for decades can end at the state level, as well.
Right-to-work laws create what economists call a “free-rider problem” for unions by banning “union security agreements,” which require that all workers who benefit from a union contract either join or pay dues to the union that negotiated it. Instead, in a right-to-work state, workers entering a unionized workplace can opt out of joining the union and paying dues while still earning union wages and benefits. Right-to-work laws threaten to rid unions of the only power they have: union membership and, in turn, the workplace solidarity, political lobbying power and dues-funded financial resources that enable unions to pressure employers and policymakers in the first place.
After decades of failed attempts by national employer groups and business magnates to ban union security, the first right-to-work laws were successfully passed at the state level.
While we most often think of 20th-century labor in terms of industrial workers in Northeast shipyards and Midwest factories, it was voters in Arkansas and Florida who, in 1944, first passed ballot referendums cementing right-to-work into their constitutions. Even when the Republican-led U.S. Congress repealed federal labor-organizing protections three years later with the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, it banned only “closed shop” agreements, in which workers must already be union members before being hired. Crucially, Taft-Hartley left it up to individual states to pass further, more restrictive bans on other common forms of union security.
The Southern origin of right-to-work was no accident. During World War II, as workers transitioned to high-paying defense industry jobs or were drafted to fight, the demand for agricultural labor skyrocketed. As a result, oft-exploited Southern farmworkers were suddenly in the rare position to claim workplace protections and union organizing rights. In response, the American Farm Bureau Federation, a private employer lobbying group, joined existing efforts to fight worker unionization.
From 1942 to 1944, state and county Farm Bureau chapters organized speaking tours, formed alliances with local politicians and published anti-union messages in newspapers. In Florida, the state legislature was deadlocked over the divisive right-to-work debate until the state Farm Bureau pushed its legislative allies to place a referendum on the general election ballot. When it came time for Florida voters — who, under Jim Crow, were almost all White — to cast their ballots in 1944, local Farm Bureau chapters orchestrated a door-to-door campaign to get out the vote. The referendum narrowly passed, with most of the support coming from counties dominated by agricultural employers.
Thanks to these state-level anti-union alliances, by the time Congress passed the federal Taft-Hartley Act that undermined the power of labor unions, the path was set for individual state governments to pass new right-to-work laws. By the end of 1947, 10 more states had right-to-work laws on the books.
Through the second half of the 20th century, states in the South and Southwest — desperately eager to recruit Northern businesses — passed their own forms of the law. The Sun Belt economy boomed, and the region saw a rise in population and electoral college votes, alongside income inequality and conservative politics. After business interests in Phoenix turned Arizona into a right-to-work state in 1946, they not only transformed the state into a corporate-friendly oasis, but also enabled the rise of conservative, anti-union politicians like Barry Goldwater and John Rhodes. In 1976, Louisiana oil field contractors led the way in unifying the state’s business community, finally turning the last holdout of the former Confederacy into a right-to-work state.
More recently, in the aftermath of the Republican tea party’s ascendancy in 2009 and the subsequent record-level Republican gains across Rust Belt state legislatures, a resurgence of right-to-work legislation spread to states like Michigan, Indiana and Wisconsin. By the time of Donald Trump’s election in 2016, laws in 27 U.S. states plus the territory of Guam required that all workers — including those not in a union — receive the benefits of any collective bargaining agreement that unionized workers negotiate for them.
Just as detrimental to working-class power as these union-organizing impediments is the self-perpetuating effect that right-to-work laws have on electoral politics. By stripping unions of the essential tools to organize working-class voters and lobby for worker-friendly policies, right-to-work laws have deprived the working class of a critical point of access to the political process, curbing a formerly key element of the Democratic coalition. Labor unions consistently point to the negative effect these laws have on workers’ political influence, and recent analysis by economists and sociologists backs their claims. Studies indicate that right-to-work laws directly reduce wages in states that pass them, shift the political balance of power toward conservative politicians and lower the economic resources that labor unions have to organize and advocate for workers.
Yet the Michigan legislature has shown that just as state-level political organizing installed right-to-work laws across the country, it can also be used to repeal them. It’s no coincidence that Michigan’s law was repealed in the wake of two 2018 citizen-led ballot initiatives that expanded voter registration and placed an independent citizen commission — rather than incumbent Republican legislators — in charge of drawing electoral district maps. The battleground state went blue in 2022, and now over 40 percent of Michigan Democratic representatives are former union members.
Much like the Farm Bureau in Florida utilized local solidarities to urge voters to pass an anti-union law in 1944, labor unions, left-leaning politicians and worker advocates can adopt a similar strategy to overturn them. In the past five years, a schoolteacher turned state representative sponsored Michigan’s repeal of right-to-work, Missouri voters reversed a right-to-work bill in a union-organized ballot referendum, and Colorado AFL-CIO locals successfully lobbied for the inclusion of agricultural workers under state labor and minimum wage protections.
Today’s right-to-work opponents face laws in 26 states, each with distinct political cultures, state-specific voting laws and varying levels of union political power. Activists interested in repealing the 1951 right-to-work law in Nevada, for example — with its Democratic-controlled state legislature facing the veto power of the state’s new, Trump-endorsed governor, a strong Culinary Workers Union consistently in battle with casino interests and an overall unionization rate hovering around the national average — face a very different battle than Florida labor advocates fighting a constitutionally protected right-to-work amendment in a state led by conservative Gov. Ron DeSantis with less than 5 percent of workers unionized.
Yet these unique state-level circumstances only reinforce the importance of the local organizing model set forth in Michigan. To undo decades of anti-union efforts, national labor unions, activist organizations and the Democratic Party must intensify their investments in local elections, grass-roots labor organizing and politicians from the working class.