'Right to work' laws

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Think there has been some shite written about this, particularly on the left.

Granted, unions are incredibly important and their declining power is a contributing factor to the economic poverty of the UK and the US.

But unions need to refrain from replicating the top-down, anti-democratic structures of the institutions they exist to tame - namely the workplace. 'Requiring' workers to sign up for a union is a dangerous game to be playing, and is along the lines of the 'give us the money, get your head down and leave us to it' spiel which has become an incessant, repulsive feature of modern democratic parties.

Of course, in the US, there are ties with federal law here as well, which as far as I can tell, require unions to cover workers who do not pay their dues. The battle I feel, for unions is to build truly democratic, grassroots coalitions within the workplace, and by arguing that workers, if they don't want to, shouldn't have to pay in for union membership, they are able to work in the long-run towards providing a truly legitimate platform for worker empowerment. 

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