Right-to-work law has benefited Georgia. Why does Jon Ossoff want to undo it?

About 79 years ago, Georgia citizens who believed joining and bankrolling a union should be matters of individual choice for every employee prevailed upon lawmakers in Atlanta to pass a right-to-work law.

Ever since, this law has protected employees across the Peach State from being fired simply because they refuse to join or pay dues or fees to a union they don’t want and never asked for.

Unfortunately, even after all these years, Big Labor can’t accept the reality that the right-to-work laws now on the books in a total of 26 states are eminently just and fair. Nor can it accept the equally obvious fact that right-to-work states typically benefit from faster growth in employment and disposable personal income.

How could it possibly be justifiable to force workers to pay money to a union when, as pro-union monopoly academic Sheldon Leader acknowledged in his book “Freedom of Association,” workers who oppose unionization are “often actually made worse off” under union rule than they were before?

Georgia’s employment growth outpaces other states

Elaborating on this point in a review of Leader’s book, the late law professor Clyde Summers added: “Full-timers may bargain to limit the jobs of part-timers, seniority provisions may disadvantage younger workers, and wage increases of the low-skilled may be at the expense of the highly skilled.”

In addition to eminent workplace-policy specialists like Leader and Summers, even politicians who have gotten elected with Big Labor’s help acknowledge that many workers are hurt, not helped, by union monopoly bargaining.

A May 2015 brief to the U.S. Supreme Court signed by a group of California officials, including then-Attorney General Kamala Harris and then-Solicitor General Ed DuMont, confirmed that statutes authorizing monopolistic unionism give Big Labor officials “substantial latitude to advance bargaining positions that … run counter to the economic interests of some employees.”

Elaborating on this point in a review of Leader’s book, the late law professor Clyde Summers added: “Full-timers may bargain to limit the jobs of part-timers, seniority provisions may disadvantage younger workers, and wage increases of the low-skilled may be at the expense of the highly skilled.”

In addition to eminent workplace-policy specialists like Leader and Summers, even politicians who have gotten elected with Big Labor’s help acknowledge that many workers are hurt, not helped, by union monopoly bargaining.

A May 2015 brief to the U.S. Supreme Court signed by a group of California officials, including then-Attorney General Kamala Harris and then-Solicitor General Ed DuMont, confirmed that statutes authorizing monopolistic unionism give Big Labor officials “substantial latitude to advance bargaining positions that … run counter to the economic interests of some employees.”

For many years, economic growth in Right to Work Georgia has far outpaced that of states where forced union dues as a job condition are still permitted. For example, from 2015 to 2025, employment in Georgia soared by 17.7%, more than double the forced-dues-state average and more than in every one of the 24 remaining non-right-to-work states.

Given the well-documented negative impact of forced unionism on a state’s economic performance, Georgia could never have pulled this off without its right-to-work law.

PRO Act would neuter state right-to-work laws

Nevertheless, Democratic Georgia U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, who is facing a challenge this fall from pro-right-to-work Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Collins, is publicly committed to wiping out this important economic advantage for Georgia if he is returned to Washington, D.C. and gets a chance.

In every Congress since he took federal office, including the current one, Ossoff has cosponsored the union-label “PRO” Act, which includes a provision that would destroy Georgia’s and every other state’s Right to Work law. In 2022, Ossoff even voted to rewrite the rules of the Senate to make it easier for union lobbyists to quash debates and ram through special-interest schemes like the “PRO” Act.

For some time now, National Right to Work Committee members in Georgia have been pleading with Ossoff to change his position and stop supporting forced unionism.

But he evidently believes that the millions of dollars in campaign support he is getting from Big Labor are more important than what’s best for the state.

There’s still time this fall for Ossoff to change course and join Collins in pledging to support right-to-work 100% in the future. But if he doesn’t, Georgia will be at grave risk of returning to Washington a forced-dues partisan who regularly sides with pro-union monopoly federal politicians like democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, on key labor policy issues.