Catherwood LibraryILR School

As President Trump shifts toward a more pro-business stance on federal labor policy, right-to-work laws at the state level are already making unionization more difficult. Right-to-work laws, which are currently enforced in 28 states, ban unions from charging fees to workers who opt out of joining the union but still benefit from collective bargaining agreements as free riders. Largely due to a lack of resources, organizers in right-to-work states filed far less petitions to unionize than in the rest of the country in 2016. Some experts believe that right-to-work laws may be an effect of declining labor organization rather than its cause, though either way the data clearly shows that right-to-work states have far less unionization than might be expected.