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The authors examine business community involvement; in right-to-work (RTW) campaigns in Louisiana during the 1940s, 1950s, and 1970s. They find that the entire business community supported RTW in the 1940s and 1970s. In the 1950s, some small businesses and major corporations avoided public involvement due to fear of retaliation by unions or the Long government of that era, but those same companies helped initiate and organize the campaigns of the 1940s and 1970s. RTW campaign successes were linked to interunion conflict and social conditions that weakened coalitions of unions and their allies. In each decade, RTW campaigns were influenced by national and international economic and political factors.

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This study suggests an historical explanation for Florida's enactment of a statewide public sector collective bargaining law in 1974. Florida has characteristics that, in other states, have tended to militate against the passage of such a law: a weak statewide labor movement, low interparty competition, active business opposition, and the long-term incumbency of conservative southern Democrats. Using interviews and historical documents, the authors identify events and conditions that, they argue, account for the 1974 legislation. Notably, federal court-ordered reapportionment led to the election of urban progressives; a revision of the state's constitution gave public employees collective bargaining rights; and the Florida Supreme Court, responding to a suit filed by a local teachers' union, took actions that forced the legislature to enact a collective bargaining law.

No abstract