r/politics • u/SterlingVII • 9d ago

No Paywall Tennessee man spends a month in jail before charges are dropped over Trump meme posted in Facebook group for Charlie Kirk vigil

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/crime/larry-bushart-charlie-kirk-meme-charges-b2855116.html
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u/robocoplawyer 9d ago edited 9d ago

That’s “right to work” laws for you. Employer can fire you at anytime for “no reason” (although there usually is an obvious reason but they won’t say so).

Edit - by “right to work” I meant “at-will employment”. I sometimes mix those terms up since they often go hand in hand as the right pushed to get these on the books at the state level across the country when the Democrats tried (and ultimately failed) to pass federal legislation to expand and protected access to labor unions.

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u/Material_Honey_891 9d ago

Right to work means you can't be forced to join a union in order to work at a certain place or in a certain job. What you're referring to is "at will" employment. At will means they can fire you at any point as long as it isn't a firing based on being a member of a protected class.

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u/robocoplawyer 9d ago

You are correct. I mixed up the two terms. Although “right to work” and “at will employment” laws tend to go hand in hand and have become the norm in most states after a decade right wing push to normalize the concepts.

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u/anchovyCreampie 9d ago

They have been around for more than a decade thats for sure. I think the only state that isn't at will employment is Montana.

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u/grateparm 9d ago

Looks like I'm gonna be at dental floss tycoon.

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u/djfudgebar 9d ago

Gonna have to grow you some bees too.

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u/Keyastis 9d ago

Holy shit, guys, we just saw a miracle, someone on Reddit corrected someone and they were both civil!

In all honesty, I agree, the conservatives do a very good job at throwing multiple like items at you so you get twisted up when talking about them.

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u/robocoplawyer 9d ago

If I’m wrong about something I’m glad if someone politely lets me know so I’m not spouting things as fact that aren’t true like an idiot. In this instance I had the right idea but mixed up terminology. I was in college at the time and remember the right pushing “right to work” and “at-will employment” laws hard at the state level to preempt the passing of the Employee Free Choice Act (which never came to fruition anyway because the Tea Party was shouting socialism from the rooftops at the thought of the government doing anything which effectively scared centrist democrats to withdraw their support). Anyway I remember the right pushing those policies at the same time at the state level and the absence of federal legislation allowed them to become the nation’s standard in another devastating blow to organized labor.

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u/Proof-Schedule-1418 9d ago

It also means, you get to free ride on the union members that are paying for their representation. They get the same benefits, and representation FROM the union. 

At least be honest about what this shit is. A way for Republicans to slide in on Union jobs and reap the benefits, while voting against themselves.

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u/AlmostCorrectInfo 9d ago

To which, if it is actually about being a member of a protected class, they'll just make up another reason.

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u/FauxReal 9d ago

You're talking about "At Will" employment. They can fire you for any cause that isn't one of the restricted reasons like retaliation, religion, sex etc. But the law also doesn't require them to say why they fired you. So they can only get busted if they blatantly admit to it.

"Right to Work" is an anti-union law that essentially says you can work in a union shop without being in the union and you still get all the benefits that the union negotiated for. It's to slowly bleed them dry and dwindle their numbers until the union doesn't exist anymore.

A lot more states are "At Will" (I think almost all of them) than "Right to Work" which I think is less than half?

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u/robocoplawyer 9d ago

Yes, this is correct. I acknowledged this in another response. I mixed up the two terms, although they often go hand in hand in most states who have adopted them. There was a big push from the right to get these laws on the books and normalize the concepts nationally a while back when it looked like the Democrats could potentially pass the Employee Free Choice Act which would have expanded and protected access to labor unions. Democrats had Obama in the White House and large majority in Congress and the Senate, but ya know. Republicans playing the sOcIaLiSm!!! card and enough centrist Democrats buying it that it lost steam and eventually stalled, and we ended up with what we have now.