Americans both support unions and right to work laws

[Person Man]

"Right to Work" simply means that the union must be responsible for the collective bargaining of non-union members that work in the same bargaining unit. Without "Right to Work", only union members can work in that bargaining unit.  That's why they call it "Right to Work" because it makes a worker entitled to work notwithstanding union status.

Like many have said, it makes it easier for employers to fire unions and hire more docile employees. However, the boss could always find out who didn't like the union in the past. I think the main issue is that some workers are getting collective bargaining for free. The problem with simply saying that people who don't pay for collective bargain get no collective bargaining is that the boss would then not necessarily have to collective bargain anymore.

The one thing that a union can do to make itself relevant in the modern era is to create its own professional organizations(like doctors, lawyers, engineers, contractors et al.) and cooperative producers/employee owned companies. Then again, if that was a viable alternative, there would be more employees doing more of that. This is probably because there is a lot of work in low paying fields that many employees considered "temporary setbacks" to employed in. There is also the possibility that all the work that's the easiest to get is with companies whose business models have very low profit margins.

Maybe if unions continue to stagnate/deteriorate and industry continues to change, it may be time to "start over" with labor and try something else.