In a right to work state job openings cannot be available only to union members. Now that the VW plant has voted for a union an employee cannot be forced to join the union and if they chose not to join the union they cannot be fired or treated differently than than union members.
How this works out for the VW plant is worth watching. Unions are parasitic cancers and would no doubt play dirty with those who chose not to join. Labor lawyers are seeing dollar signs due to this IMO.
Yes, it will be interesting at VW. I know from my experience when I lived in Ohio, that if you were in a union shop, you HAD to be union. I was a member for 11 years, before I slipped on into management. I couldn’t have had the jobs I had without being in the union. Closed shop.
But here in TN, at TVA for example, the IBEW represents a good portion of the electricians and linemen but there are a lot of people in those jobs that are not union members.
I will watch the VW situation closely.
I’m not so much in disagreement with the trade unions - many friends are/were electricians, carpenters, iron workers, and the union trained them and handles their pensions and such. Also, in the trades, if you aren’t good at your job, employers will skip you and bring on someone else if they need additional workers for a big job. My friend was good at his job, and had plenty of work over the years, but as he grew older, they started grabbing the younger guys more often because they could do things that the older people no longer could.