Laws generally seen outside the U.S. Northeast and Midwest that forbid mandatory union membership as a condition of employment.

These laws are generally passed to promote job growth. Corporations are attracted by the ability to avoid collective bargaining as much as possible, and employees aren't forced to take deductions for union membership from their paychecks if they don't feel it necessary to join. This makes job relations somewhat complex in union shops, as non-union and union workers may be working side-by-side in the same job capacity, but have distinctly different career goals and relations with management.

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deep thought: you're dead-on that this hasn't happened in Virginia -- most of the places that need the jobs (specifically, the far southwest, and Martinsville and Danville near the North Carolina border) have long traditions of heavy unionization. The BMW plant in Greer, SC and the Mercedes-Benz plant in Alabama are probably the most shining examples of the job growth phenomenon as a result of right-to-work.

My friend VT is probably referring to Virginia, in particular with this law. Virginia prides itself on being a non-union state, although the coal mines in the western corner of the state have had unions for years (Since the mines are about 12 hours from the capital, the pols have sorta looked the other way).

Despite having these laws in place for generations there has not been an explosion of job growth in industrial and manufacturing like their neighbors to the south (North Carolina and Georgia) have experienced.

The majority of the job growth has been in only two areas:

the Tidewater area, in and around the US Naval base and the mulifaceted federal government offices and subcontractors in and around Northern Virginia. The rest of the state looks a like like it did in 1960. So there is some growth, but little of it has to do with this "union bad- open shop good" policy.

Still, the state can have both steady growth, antiunion policies and limited state expenses since the Federal government does such a large amount of their hiring for them. All they get out of it is low unemployment and payroll taxes.

Nice gig