Why Are Anti-Union Laws Called “Right To Work”?

A mini-Explainer on the history of management’s favorite political catchphrase.

By Brian Palmer  |  Posted Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2012, at 4:51 PM ET

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder signed a bill banning mandatory union membership Tuesday. Republicans have been pressing for so-called “right to work” laws across the Midwest. Major labor groups almost uniformly oppose these bills, so why do we call them “right to work” laws?

Because they allow you to work through a strike. Commentator and lexicographer William Safire chronicled the origins of the phrase “right to work” in his Political Dictionary. A 1912 Bernard Partridge cartoon depicted an employer telling a striking worker, “I can’t make you work if you won’t; but if this man wants to, I can make you let him. And I will.” By the 1930s, the phrase “right to work” was common in American political parlance, and it was meant to draw a contrast to labor’s claim of a right to strike.