NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) – When Tennesseans head to the polls on Election Day, one of the items on their ballots will be a constitutional amendment adding a “right to work” provision into the state’s founding document.
But what is the right to work?
“The idea is, in a right-to-work state, if I go work at Company X, and they have a union, I have a right to not join that union,” said Jon Harris, a Nashville employment lawyer with Ogletree Deakins. “The company cannot fire me because I don’t join the union. When you hear ‘right to work,’ that’s talking about unionization.”
While the right-to-work question is on the ballot in Amendment 1 this November, Tennessee is already a right-to-work state and has been since 1947.
“We already have a statute that makes us a right-to-work state,” Harris said. “What the constitutional amendment would do is to put that in the constitution.”
Proponents of the amendment and right-to-work laws say they keep states competitive economically, while opponents say the provisions hamstring a union’s ability to do their job representing workers.
What right-to-work doesn’t do, however, is say you can be fired from a company in Tennessee for no reason. That is a tenant of the doctrine of at-will employment.
“They’re two pretty different concepts,” Harris told News 2. “At-will employment is the idea that you can be fired for a good reason, a bad reason or no reason at all. That’s separate from the concept of a right-to-work state.”
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