Right To Work

RightToWork laws are an invention in several US states that establish rights of free association between employers and employees; many consider them to be a good idea gone wrong.

After labor unions made huge gains in establishing safer, more humane conditions in the early 19th century, they started getting more and more politically powerful, which meant that politicians started drafting and passing legislation for them in order to secure their own seats. Some of the more egregious legislation in the 1930s made it possible to turn certain industries into closed-shop Union industries. People were literally not allowed to work if they didn't belong to the most powerful union in that industry, in that geographical area. Recall that this was a time when US unemployment was already a huge problem. The result was that the public opinion pendulum swung the other way, and some states started enacting RightToWork laws, which stated (among other things) that workers have the right to decide for themselves whether to join a union.

RightToWork laws are often confused with AtWillEmployment? laws, which state that an employment agreement is entered into by the employer and employee at will, and can be severed by either party at will (eliminating both the traditional "two weeks' notice" an employee gives an employer and any obligation on the part of the employer to give advance notice of a layoff or firing).

Unhappily, the most usual implementation of these laws is seen as employer-side rules that weigh heavily in the interest of the employer (unsurprising) but at the expense of the employee. The employer typically implements policies that keep it "just this side of legal" in observance of the local laws, and gives HR the task of keeping people compliant with the organization's "HR policies" under threat of being "dismissed for no cause" when it becomes clear that someone is unhappy, desires change, or is a nuisance.

What is missing is a set of policies that actually (meaning "not a pretense") balance the needs of the company with the needs of the individual. Unfortunately, such a policy regime would burden management with conducting its affairs openly and ethically, and a company could reasonably expect such a regime to cost more, at least initially.

And who will watch the watchers? Enforcement of a company's policies is ... the company's job. Tricky to establish a position within an organization that has enough autonomy to keep management in line as well as the labor pool. Since such practices are not taught in our schools, and since the (corporate) perception is that this is a costly and messy thing to attempt, most will not try to do it at all.

And, in the end, those who get it wrong enough will either wind up with a union or out of business.

I don't suppose we're going to see a true rationalization of management policies being taught in our business schools any time soon, so I guess we get to live with whichever style of mismanagement suits us best.