Right to Work, Reconsidered
In order for organized labor to overcome the anti-union political right, it must shift focus from simply using collective power for meager pay raises, towards taking back power.
by Nicholas Hefling
As a union rep, I hear a lot of confusion about Right to Work (RTW) — a term that the left should reappropriate. RTW is the norm in most states (though not in the State of Washington) and the entire public sector since 2018. Where RTW exists, most workers in a union-represented workplace only pay dues voluntarily. RTW is an attack on a hard-won contractual provision called the union security clause, which requires that everyone a union represents pay their share of the cost of that representation.
At first glance, RTW can sound fairer to workers; why should anyone be forced to pay union dues? Here’s the catch. Even when a worker pays nothing, the union is still legally required to represent them: to bargain on their behalf, file their grievances, and defend their rights on the job. That costs significant resources. When the share of workers paying dues shrinks while the represented workforce doesn’t, the union is squeezed. This strain pushes unions to raise dues (which drives more people to drop out), cut staff, or scale back external organizing efforts. That, of course, was the dream anti-union activists pursued in Janus v. AFSCME.
From 1977 until 2018, public-sector agency fees (public-sector speak for union dues) were constitutionally protected under Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, and by 2018, 22 states plus D.C. allowed for public-sector union security. Anti-union activists came close to killing agency fees in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association in 2016, but the sudden death of Justice Scalia left the Court deadlocked 4–4, and the pro-union ruling permitting union security survived. Undeterred, right-wing think tanks brought another vehicle in 2018: Janus. The 5–4 majority argued that requiring a public employee to pay agency fees is compelled “political speech.” Never mind the fact that there were already stringent legal limits that govern how dues can be spent. Never mind that objectors could redirect that money to a charity of their choice, and never mind that the ruling broke with decades of precedent. It was a landmark victory for the Right, which has long wanted RTW in every state and workplace.
With Janus making every public-sector union in the country RTW, the next target was the private sector. However, because public-sector workers represent a highly disproportionate share of all union members in the United States, the private sector represents a smaller prize for anti-union activists. According to the latest figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, private-sector union density sits at a historically dismal 5.9%. In comparison, the public sector, though still far from where it should be, sits at a much more robust 32.9%.
So why chase union security clauses one at a time instead of going after the entire legal framework that unions depend on to exist? That’s the real dream of the anti-union Right: to strip unionization of any institutional recognition and power. Enter the recent, hotly contested fight over the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) itself — the federal body that certifies and governs private-sector unions nationwide. In August 2025, the Fifth Circuit ruled in SpaceX, Energy Transfer, and Findhelp v. NLRB that the removal protections shielding the Board’s members and judges are likely unconstitutional under Article II, which froze the Board’s proceedings against those companies (Amazon, Trader Joe’s, and Starbucks have pressed similar arguments in their own cases). SpaceX sought to bring the issue before the Supreme Court to land a killing blow. That effort stalled when the new NLRB under Trump’s second term withdrew the complaint against SpaceX, leaving no live controversy for the court to rule on. Unions have petitioned to intervene and keep the fight alive; as of now the issue remains unresolved. The future of the NLRB, and of private-sector organizing as we know it, is still up in the air.
The anti-union Right uses the courts because they’ve held them for decades, and they’ll keep winning there. None of this gets undone in a courtroom. It gets undone by militant shop floor organizing and federal legislation. This is more difficult precisely because it requires the density of organized workers that RTW was designed to prevent. We must shift our focus from simply using our collective power for meager pay raises and maintenance of benefits towards taking back power and shared ownership of operations. The labor movement spent fifty years managing decline from behind a bargaining table. Our moment demands we stop defending the old model and start taking back what the bosses have spent a century accumulating.
Nicholas Hefling is a longtime union staffer and local area labor organizer.