Right to Work

BY STEVE NUZUM

In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as ‘right to work.’ It is a law to rob us of our civil rights and job rights. Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining by which unions have improved wages and working conditions of everyone…Wherever these laws have been passed, wages are lower, job opportunities are fewer and there are no civil rights. We do not intend to let them do this to us. We demand this fraud be stopped. Our weapon is our vote. - Martin Luther King, speaking about right-to-work laws in 1961 (via Economic Policy Institute)

You thought we’d just die out after a day or two of marching. You thought we’d say, ‘Sorry, boss,’ and put those handkerchiefs back on our heads. - Mary Moultrie, strike leader during the 1969 Charleston Nurses Strike (quoted in Stories of Struggle, by Claudia Smith Brinson)

South Carolina’s so-called “Right to Work” statute was passed in 1962 (not coincidentally, at the height of the struggle for Civil Rights in the South; schools would not begin to be legally integrated in the state until 1963). Today, it is one of 28 US states with a “right to work” law in place.

“Right to work” laws are often promoted with the argument that they protect employees from being forced to join a union, but federal  law already prohibits “closed shops”-- jobs where joining a labor union or other organization is a requirement for employment; in this sense, Americans already have a protected right to work free from the obligation to join a union.  

Instead, “right to work” laws go further, damaging the ability of labor organizations to raise dues from the employees they represent. 

In practice, the inability of unions and other labor organizations to raise money and bargain is strongly correlated with negative outcomes for workers and communities.

Research has supported the argument that right-to-work school districts, for example, consistently and significantly underpay employees, compared with districts with full union representation. 

One study also found that, “unionized districts can better retain good teachers and dismiss more underperforming teachers” and that “promoting

union-friendly environments may create more encouraging economic conditions for teachers and provide districts with incentives to select better teachers, eventually raising teacher quality.” 

Another found that “right to work” laws led to longer working hours for employees.

The advantages of collective bargaining.  

According to Education Week,  “[teacher] strikes can pay dividends for unions' bottom lines: A 2024 study found teacher strikes are associated with 8% higher pay and smaller class sizes—even in states that don't permit strikes—and the benefit came in part from state-level education funding boosts in the wake of teacher activism. Larger school district budgets in turn make it easier for teachers to negotiate on pay, class size, and other issues.” 

And beyond the education workplace, research suggests that states without “right to work” laws and higher union participation have fewer workplace injuries, and that healthcare providers without these restrictions on unions have better healthcare outcomes for patients. 

Traditionally, unions and other professional associations generate political power in large part by raising money through member dues-- allowing them to lobby, to fill strike funds, to engage in public messaging, and to hire staff.  At their best, these organizations are controlled by their members, and use money collected through dues to improve working conditions for their members, collectively.  (For more on this, see my last piece, “What is Your Theory of Change?”)

Labor organizing and Civil Rights

It’s no accident that Civil Rights leaders were often engaged in organizing workers in a similar way to traditional labor unions, knowing that while individual employees may have no power against their employers or influence with their elected officials, their collective power could be significant. 

Martin Luther King, Jr.,  when he was assassinated, was explicitly engaged in organizing public employees.  

In the final public speech of his life, King told his audience, “The issue is injustice. The issue is the refusal of Memphis to be fair and honest in its dealings with its public servants, who happen to be sanitation workers. Now, we’ve got to keep attention on that. That’s always the problem with a little violence. You know what happened the other day, and the press dealt only with the window-breaking. I read the articles. They very seldom got around to mentioning the fact that one thousand, three hundred sanitation workers are on strike, and that Memphis is not being fair to them, and that Mayor Loeb is in dire need of a doctor. They didn’t get around to that.”

The history of “right to work” legislation and rhetoric in South Carolina and other historically segregated states has often been entangled with an opposition to Civil Rights. 

A 1962 advertisement paid for by a committee to elect Arthur Ravenel, Jr., to the South Carolina Senate touted Ravenel’s support for the state’s “Right to Work” law. In the same advertisement, Ravenel was quoted as standing against the "invasion of Mississippi" in 1962 (presumably his way of describing the federal mobilization of the National Guard to oppose the illegal segregation of the University of Mississippi). (Source: Evening Post November 3, 1962). 

According to Stanford’s King Institute, South Carolina Civil Rights leader Septima “worked with the YWCA and participated in a class action lawsuit filed by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) that led to pay equity for black and white teachers in South Carolina. In 1956 South Carolina passed a statute that prohibited city and state employees from belonging to civil rights organizations. After 40 years of teaching, Clark’s [teacher] employment contract was not renewed when she refused to resign from the NAACP.”

Black workers had been formally organized in South Carolina since at least 1867, when they formed a longshoreman’s union that would go on to be the longest-running union in the state. 

Labor victories lead to backlash.

An entry in the South Carolina Encyclopedia implicitly ties these successful labor actions to the “right to work” law:  “subsequent to the 1969 Charleston [Hospital] strike, the state officially adopted a policy of prohibiting public employees from unionizing and of prohibiting public officials from negotiating with public employee unions.” 

Complicating matters more, thanks to a 2000 state supreme court decision (Branch v Myrtle Beach, “it has generally been recognized that the right-to-work statute does not apply to public employment,” specifically when it comes to the protection the law provides for employees who do wish to join a labor organization or association. So while overall spending for education is already low, teachers also don’t have the few protections the law provides other employees in this area. 

This leaves the state’s public employees uniquely unable to collectively bargain and limited in their ability to organize to improve their working conditions.  

Where do we go from here?

First, it’s important to remember that the freedom to assemble is protected by the United State Constitution. While it may be technically illegal for public employees to formally collectively bargain with the state or with their employers, most recent teacher organizing efforts didn’t begin with formal collective bargaining. The “Red for Ed” actions (including strikes, walkouts, and rallies) in 2018 and 2019 were often “wildcat” actions by groups of individual teachers-- not formally authorized in advance by teacher unions or associations, and often not collective bargaining in the strictest sense.

And unions, themselves, despite popular opinion, remain legal in South Carolina.  

The “right to work” law in South Carolina is arguably not the biggest impediment to teacher organizing, but it is almost certainly a major contributor to the fact that the state has, by some measures, the lowest union participation in the country. 

The larger impediment to organizing, I would argue, is the anti-worker sentiment that runs so deep in our culture. I was born in South Carolina and spent my whole education career here.  There seems to be a widespread belief-- misguided in my opinion-- that advocating on behalf of school employees is somehow in conflict with supporting students and families; the research strongly suggests that the opposite is true, and that we won’t improve our schools until we find ways to help the people who work in them shape the policy and funding that determine their futures.