The Legal Status of The Open Shop
The term open shop is also used similarly in Canada, mostly in reference to construction contractors that have at least a partially non-union workforce. Canadians enjoy the freedom to associate, guaranteed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, inherently including the right not to associate.
United States labor law outlaws the open shop in its extreme form: it prohibits private sector employers from refusing to hire employees because they are union members just as it prevents discrimination against employees who do not wish to join unions.
The open shop in its milder form, in which the open shop represents only an employer's refusal to favor union members for employment, is legal. Although the National Labor Relations Act permits construction employers to enter into pre-hire agreements, in which they agree to draw their workforces from a pool of employees dispatched by the union, employers are under no legal compulsion to enter into such agreements.
Non-union construction employers have also adopted the phrase "merit shop" to describe their operations. In many connotations, the terms are interchangeable, however it may be used differently by different sides of the open shop issue.
The open shop is also the legal norm in those states that have adopted right-to-work laws. In those cases, employers are barred from enforcing union security arrangements and may not fire an employee for failure to pay union dues.
Read more about this topic: Open Shop
Famous quotes containing the words legal, status, open and/or shop:
“The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“As a work of art it has the same status as a long conversation between two not very bright drunks.”
—Clive James (b. 1939)
“I have passed down the river before sunrise on a summer morning, between fields of lilies still shut in sleep; and when, at length, the flakes of sunlight from over the bank fell on the surface of the water, whole fields of white blossoms seemed to flash open before me, as I floated along, like the unfolding of a banner, so sensible is this flower to the influence of the sun’s rays.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Thank God we’re living in a country where the sky’s the limit, the stores are open late and you can shop in bed thanks to television.”
—Joan Rivers (b. 1935)