Samuel Gompers built the American labor movement on one word: voluntary.
Now his successors want to make you pay whether you like it or not.
A bill sitting in Congress right now would end forced union dues forever – and union bosses are spending millions to kill it.
The National Right to Work Act Union Bosses Are Trying to Kill
H.R. 1232 – the National Right to Work Act – is not a sweeping overhaul of federal labor law.
It targets six provisions buried in federal law that let union officials threaten workers with termination for refusing to pay dues.
Pull those six provisions out, and the government can no longer force a single American worker to financially support a union they never wanted.
Under current federal law, a union can claim the right to represent every worker in a bargaining unit, even workers who despise the union and never asked for its help.
Then it can demand those workers hand over dues money – or lose their job.
Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina introduced H.R. 1232 this Congress to end that arrangement.
Sen. Rand Paul introduced the Senate companion.
Neither bill has moved out of committee.
The PRO Act Would Wipe Out Forced Union Dues Protections in 26 States
While the Right to Work Act sits buried in committee, union bosses are playing offense.
The PRO Act – reintroduced by Bernie Sanders and House Democrats in March 2025 – would wipe out every Right to Work law in all 26 states that currently protect workers from forced union dues.
It would hand union officials the power to impose mandatory dues contracts through government bureaucrats.
It would block workers from even holding votes to remove unions they no longer support.
The American Action Forum estimates the PRO Act would cost employers more than $47 billion in new annual costs – expenses that get passed directly to workers and consumers.
Union bosses already moved pieces of it through the House in June 2026, when seven House Republicans sided with every Democrat to pass the so-called Faster Labor Contracts Act, 230-193.
The line between worker protection and union boss power grab keeps moving in one direction.
Workers Already Know Which Side They're On
The AFL-CIO's own ideological ancestor said the quiet part out loud more than a century ago.
Samuel Gompers wrote in 1916: "The workers of America adhere to voluntary institutions in preference to compulsory systems which are held to be not only impractical but a menace to their rights, welfare, and their liberty."
Those are the words of the man who built the labor movement – and they line up perfectly with what workers say today.
A 2024 national poll found 79 percent of union members agree that workers should never be forced to join a union or pay dues as a condition of employment.
Seventy-nine percent of the people paying the dues.
The union bosses know their own members don't support compulsion – which is why they fight so hard to keep the coercion in federal law.
The Numbers Show What Freedom Actually Does
Union density in private-sector America has hit historic lows, and the union boss answer is always the same: force more workers in.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that union membership as a share of the workforce sat at 10 percent in 2025 – down from more than 20 percent in 1983.
Workers in Right to Work states average union membership rates around 5.4 percent – not because they're forbidden from joining, but because they're free to choose.
Workers in non-Right to Work states, where dues can be compulsory, show rates near 14 percent.
The only place union membership stays high is where workers have no way out – that's a subscription you can't cancel, not a movement people actually believe in.
Tocqueville wrote that Americans had a unique genius for building organizations people genuinely wanted to join.
The union bosses gave up on that idea the moment Washington agreed to do their recruiting for them.
H.R. 1232 would take that arrangement apart – six provisions repealed, and 14.7 million American workers finally get to decide for themselves.
Sources:
- Mark Mix, "Make Unions Voluntary Again," The Daily Wire, September 4, 2026.
- Rand Paul Senate Office, "Dr. Rand Paul Reintroduces National Right to Work Act," February 12, 2025.
- Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Union Members – 2025," U.S. Department of Labor, February 18, 2026.
- National Right to Work Committee, "National Right to Work Act," nrtwc.org.
- Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, "Protecting the Right to Organize Act," myprivateballot.com, 2025.
- National Right to Work Committee, "Big Labor's GOP Appeasers Channel Barack Obama," nrtwc.org, August 2026.