Gallup: 71% of Americans Support 'Right to Work' Laws

PRINCETON, NJ -- A slim majority of Americans, 53%, approve of labor unions, although approval remains on the low end of Gallup's nearly 80-year trend on this question. Approval has been as high as 75% in the 1950s. Currently, 38% disapprove of unions.

At the same time Americans express greater approval than disapproval of unions, they widely support right-to-work laws. Those laws allow workers to hold jobs in unionized workplaces without joining a union. Currently, 10% of Americans identify as union members according to Gallup's Aug. 7-10 poll.

In an update of a question asked in 1957, 71% of Americans said they would "vote for" a right-to-work law if they had the opportunity to do so, while 22% said they would vote against such a law. That is a slightly higher level of support than Gallup measured nearly 60 years ago.

The Fall of the House of Labor

By Patrick J. Buchanan

In 1958, Senate Minority Leader William Knowland, his eye on the 1960 GOP nomination coveted by fellow Californian Richard Nixon, went home and declared for governor.

Knowland’s plan: Ride to victory on the back of Proposition 18, the initiative to make right-to-work the law in the Golden Land. Prop. 18 was rejected 2 to 1. Knowland’s career was over, and the Republicans were decimated nationally for backing right-to-work.

Badly burned, the party for years ran away from the issue.