"We the disinherited of this land" : Kinship with the poor, 1929/ 1956 -- "We have a powerful instrument" : Rights unionism and the cold war, 1957/ 1963 -- "Northern ghettos are the prisons of forgotten men" : Labor and civil rights at the crossroads, 1964/ 1966 -- "In God's economy" :...

This paper uses two complementary approaches to estimate the effect of right-to-work (RTW) laws on wages and unionization rates. The first approach uses an event study design to analyze the impact of the adoption of RTW laws in five U.S. states since 2011. The second approach relies on a...

Unions play a crucial role in determining wages and employment outcomes. However, union bargaining power may also have important effects on non-pecuniary working conditions. We study the effects of right-to-work laws, which removed agency shop protection and weakened union powers on long hours...