forced to join?

Posted Apr 10, 2014 14:49 UTC (Thu) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784)
In reply to: forced to join? by alex
Parent article: FSF gives awards to Matthew Garrett, Outreach Program for Women

A quick poke around on the internet suggests the situation is this:

Closed shops per se (where you have to be a member of the union to get hired at all) were banned in the USA in 1947 with the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act.
Union shops (where paying union dues is a condition of continued employment, even if you decline to join the union) are still legal in US states that have not passed right-to-work laws.

(There are some slight wrinkles to the above.)