Episode 3: Johnnie Lotesta and Tom VanHeuvelen on Right-to-Work Laws

After an extended hiatus, the Marxist Sociology Blog is back!

Today we are taking a deep dive into an arcane but extremely important facet of U.S. labor law, known as "right-to-work" (RTW) laws. Despite their name, these laws have nothing to do with guaranteeing employment, and everything to do with weakening unions. They've been in the news recently because Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer repealed that state's RTW law on March 24, 2023—the first time since 1965 that a RTW law was repealed, and only the fifth time ever since these laws began getting enacted in the 1940s.

RTW has been a flashpoint of social and political conflict in the U.S. for decades. Anti-union employers and politicians have spent much time and energy getting right-to-work laws passed, while unions and labour supporters have fought them tooth and nail. But why is there so much fuss about such an arcane law? Why and how to right-to-work laws matter? What do right-to-work laws actually do?

To grapple with these questions, we are joined on the podcast by two experts on RTW laws. Johnnie Lotesta is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Appalachian State University, and Tom VanHeuvelen is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Minnesota.

Click here to read Lotesta's dissertation (soon to be a book) on the politics of RTW in the Rust Belt in the 2010s, entitled "Rightward in the Rustbelt: How Conservatives Remade the GOP, 1947-2012." 

Click here to read VanHeuvelen's paper in the American Journal of Sociology, "The Right to Work, Power Resources, and Economic Inequality," which analyses of the effects of RTW on income inequality, and explains why it's so hard to find consistent effects. 

Podcast hosted by Barry Eidlin

Find the Marxist Section of the American Sociological Association on Twitter @marxistsoc

Find Barry on Twitter @eidlin