The Politics of Right to Work: The Labor Federations as Special Interests, 1943-1979

Gall has compiled what is almost certainly the definitive study of right-to-work campaigns at the national and state levels since the early 1940’s… . The author’s emphasis on carefully documenting these campaigns means that this book will primarily interest specialists in political science and labor history. Further, this book will be a handy reference source for other readers who want to separate rhetoric from reality on this contentious issue.

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The Politics of Right to Work presents both a comprehensive history of organized labor’s response to the challenges posed by the right to work movement and an in-depth examination of the partisan political dimensions of that challenge. The first full-length treatment of the subject to cover the period from the early 1940s through the late 1970s, the study uses qualitative and quantative analytical techniques to examine the political implications of states’ attempts to restrict union security since the first right-to-work laws were passed in Novermber 1944.