One of the most common types of union security is the union shop, a term practically everyone in the United States has heard, but one with which many people in certain areas are largely unfamiliar. The concept of the union shop is that collective bargaining is only possible when the entire work force of a certain business is with the union. That is, if a union were to strike for better benefits, and only half of the employees are members of the union, the business may be able to safely ignore the union. The union, in this case, has little power to affect working conditions.
To prevent this from happening, unions have reached agreements with the companies which employ them necessitating new employees join the union. These new hires are granted a certain grace period, after which they must join the union or pay the equivalent of dues. Under the National Labor Relations Act, the employees have at least 30 days before they must join the union or begin paying dues. This way, the union is able to exercise collective bargaining effectively.
The union shop replaced the more stringent policy of the closed shop, which the Taft-Hartley Act illegalized in 1947 in the United States. In a closed shop, a prospective employee had to already be a due-paying member of a union before they could even be hired by a company. This situation had certain obvious benefits to those already in a union - principally, being in a much smaller labor pool and therefore being far more likely to be hired - and certain obvious problems for people not in a union. Because the policy was effectively discriminatory, the US government outlawed the practice, although union shops were allowed to continue.
However, union shops are not effectively present in many states, mostly southern and southwestern ones, which are so-called Right-to-Work states. In these 22 states, laws prohibit companies signing agreements with unions mandating union membership or due-paying to be required of employment, either before or after hiring. Unions are much weaker in these states, as they have little power to effectively bargain with their employers. Unions may still exist in these states, but they lack some of their traditional function.
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