right-to-work states

Examples of right-to-work states in the following topics:

• Employment Policy

  • Employment policy determines living and working standards that need to be met by the state and the federal government.
  • Federal law not only sets the standards that govern workers' rights to organize in the private sector, but also overrides most state and local laws that attempt to regulate this area.
  • The Act, among other things, prohibits jurisdictional strikes and secondary boycotts by unions, and authorizes individual states to pass "right-to-work laws", regulates pension and other benefit plans established by unions and provides that federal courts have jurisdiction to enforce collective bargaining agreements.
  • For the most part, the NLRA and RLA displace state laws that attempt to regulate the right to organize, to strike and to engage in collective bargaining.
  • A number of states have enacted higher minimum wages and extended their laws to cover workers who are excluded under the FLSA or to provide rights that federal law ignores.

• Confederate Politics

  • Davis clashed with powerful state governors who used states'-rights arguments to hamper mobilization plans.
  • Vance's work to mitigate harsh Confederate conscription practices inspired his nickname, “War Governor of the South.”
  • North Carolina was also the only state to observe the right of habeas corpus during the war.
  • Front row, left to right: Judah P.
  • Back row, standing left to right: Christopher Memminger and LeRoy Pope Walker.

• Liberty of Contract

  • New York pitted the individual right of "liberty of contract" against the state's right to regulate business.
  • In 1902 a New York baker named Joseph Lochner was fined for violating a state law limiting the number of hours his employees could work.
  • He sued the state on the grounds that he was denied his right to "due process. " Lochner claimed that he had the right to freely contract with his employees and that the state had unfairly interfered with that right.
  • In 1905 the Supreme Court used the "due process" clause in the 14th Amendment to declare unconstitutional the New York state statute imposing a limit on hours of work.
  • The right to purchase or to sell labor is part of the liberty protected by this amendment..."

• Defining and Defending Property Rights

  • They are the right to:
  • The rights are put in place to control, monitor, and exclude the use of the stated property.
  • There is a difference between an economist's view of property rights and the view of the law, but both work together to reach the final goal of securing and maintaining the rights.
  • Economics sets the property rights and the law is used to enforce the rights.
  • National parks in the United States are state property.

• A Brief Definition

  • The right to collectively bargain is recognized through international human rights conventions.
  • Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights identifies the ability to organize trade unions as a fundamental human right.
  • Item 2(a) of the International Labour Organization's Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work defines the "freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining" as an essential right of workers.
  • The collective agreements reached by these negotiations usually set out wage scales, working hours, training, health and safety, overtime, grievance mechanisms, and rights to participate in workplace or company affairs.
  • The so-called monopoly union model (Dunlop, 1944) states that the monopoly union has the power to maximize the wage rate; the firm then chooses the level of employment.

• The Bill of Rights

  • While the amendments originally applied only to the federal government, most of their provisions have since been held to apply to the states by way of the Fourteenth Amendment.
  • However, most state legislatures refused to ratify the Constitution without the Bill of Rights being added to the document.
  • James Madison recognized that Congress should respond to the demands of the state conventions and authored the text of the Bill of Rights.
  • Madison's work on the Bill of Rights also reflected centuries of English law and philosophy, further modified by the principles of the American Revolution.
  • On November 20, 1789, New Jersey became the first state to ratify these amendments.

• The Bill of Rights

  • The Bill of Rights reserves for the people any rights not specifically mentioned in the Constitution and reserves all powers not specifically granted to the federal government to the people or the States.
  • The Bill of Rights is the collective name for the first ten amendments of the United States Constitution.
  • In addition, the Bill of Rights reserves for the people any rights not specifically mentioned in the Constitution and reserves all powers not specifically granted to the federal government to the people or the States.
  • To some degree, the Bill of Rights incorporated the ideas of John Locke, who argued in his 1689 work, Two Treatises of Government, that civil society was created for the protection of property .
  • Like Hobbes, Locke assumed that the sole right to defend in the state of nature was not enough, so people established a civil society to resolve conflicts in a civil way with help from government in a state of society.

• Natural Rights

  • Thomas Hobbes' conception of natural rights extended from his conception of man in a "state of nature."
  • In his natural state, according to Hobbes, man's life consisted entirely of liberties and not at all of laws.
  • The most famous natural right formulation comes from John Locke in his Second Treatise, when he introduces the state of nature.
  • Thomas Paine further elaborated on natural rights in his influential work Rights of Man (1791), emphasizing that rights cannot be granted by any charter because this would legally imply they can also be revoked and under such circumstances they would be reduced to privileges.
  • Some social contract theorists reasoned, however, that in the natural state only the strongest could benefit from their rights.

• Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and the Movement for Women's Suffrage

  • Women's suffrage in the United States was achieved gradually, at state and local levels, during the late 19th century and early 20th century, culminating in 1920 with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution which gave women the right to vote.
  • They continued work on The Revolution which included radical feminist challenges to traditional female roles.
  • Susan Brownell Anthony (1820 – 1906) was a prominent American civil rights leader who played a pivotal role in the 19th century women's rights movement to introduce women's suffrage into the United States.
  • Both Stanton and Anthony were angry that the abolitionists, their former partners in working for both African American and women's rights, refused to demand that the language of the amendments be changed to include women.
  • This constitutionally-based argument, which came to be called "the new departure" in women's rights circles because of its divergence from earlier attempts to change voting laws on a state-by-state basis, led to first Anthony (in 1872), and later Stanton (in 1880), going to the polls and demanding to vote.

• Basic Consumer Rights

  • Kennedy presented a speech to the United States Congress in which he extolled four basic consumer rights -- later called, The Consumer Bill of Rights .
  • In 1985, these rights were expanded to eight by the United Nations.
  • This right states that businesses should always provide consumers with enough appropriate information to make intelligent and informed product choices.
  • The right to free choice among product offerings states that consumers should have a variety of options provided by different companies from which to choose.
  • To live and work in an environment which is non-threatening to the well-being of present and future generations.