While we most often think of 20th-century labor in terms of industrial workers in Northeast shipyards and Midwest factories, it was voters in Arkansas and Florida who, in 1944, first passed ballot referendums cementing right-to-work into their constitutions. Even when the Republican-led U.S. Congress repealed federal labor-organizing protections three years later with the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, it banned only “closed shop” agreements, in which workers must already be union members before being hired. Crucially, Taft-Hartley left it up to individual states to pass further, more restrictive bans on other common forms of union security.
The Southern origin of right-to-work was no accident. During World War II, as workers transitioned to high-paying defense industry jobs or were drafted to fight, the demand for agricultural labor skyrocketed. As a result, oft-exploited Southern farmworkers were suddenly in the rare position to claim workplace protections and union organizing rights. In response, the American Farm Bureau Federation, a private employer lobbying group, joined existing efforts to fight worker unionization.
From 1942 to 1944, state and county Farm Bureau chapters organized speaking tours, formed alliances with local politicians and published anti-union messages in newspapers. In Florida, the state legislature was deadlocked over the divisive right-to-work debate until the state Farm Bureau pushed its legislative allies to place a referendum on the general election ballot. When it came time for Florida voters — who, under Jim Crow, were almost all White — to cast their ballots in 1944, local Farm Bureau chapters orchestrated a door-to-door campaign to get out the vote. The referendum narrowly passed, with most of the support coming from counties dominated by agricultural employers.
Thanks to these state-level anti-union alliances, by the time Congress passed the federal Taft-Hartley Act that undermined the power of labor unions, the path was set for individual state governments to pass new right-to-work laws. By the end of 1947, 10 more states had right-to-work laws on the books.
Through the second half of the 20th century, states in the South and Southwest — desperately eager to recruit Northern businesses — passed their own forms of the law. The Sun Belt economy boomed, and the region saw a rise in population and electoral college votes, alongside income inequality and conservative politics. After business interests in Phoenix turned Arizona into a right-to-work state in 1946, they not only transformed the state into a corporate-friendly oasis, but also enabled the rise of conservative, anti-union politicians like Barry Goldwater and John Rhodes. In 1976, Louisiana oil field contractors led the way in unifying the state’s business community, finally turning the last holdout of the former Confederacy into a right-to-work state.