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Empirical models of local government unionization reveal substantial reductions in union membership due to right-to-work laws. Free riders, rather than underlying antiunion sentiments, are probably responsible because the unionization models include better measures of sentiments than right-to-work laws. Furthermore, these laws reduce the probability that bargaining unions form by more than they reduce the probability that nonbargaining associations form in three of five local government functions. These results also confirm the importance of free riders because union security clauses that prohibit free riders in states without right-to-work laws exist only in collective-bargaining contracts.
Ichniowski et al. (Mon,) studied this question.