National Right to Work Committee Founded to Coordinate Anti-Union Corporate Lobbying

Fred A. Hartley—co-sponsor of the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act that enabled state right-to-work laws—founds the National Right to Work Committee (NRTWC) as a coordinating organization for corporate anti-union lobbying efforts. The organization brings together “hard-core conservatives, anti-communist zealots and Christian fundamentalists” with the explicit goal of “crippling trade unions” through state-level right-to-work legislation exploiting Section 14(b) of the Taft-Hartley Act that Hartley himself authored.

Over the following seven decades, the NRTWC grows into a multi-organization network including the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation (501c3) and the National Institute for Labor Relations Research, with combined annual revenues exceeding $25 million by 2012. The organization receives major funding from corporate and conservative donors including the Koch brothers (Freedom Partners provides $1 million in 2012, Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation $15,000), Walton Family Foundation (Walmart), Coors family’s Castle Rock Foundation, and Wisconsin’s Bradley Foundation, along with Koch-connected DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund.

The NRTWC pioneers the strategy of using right-to-work legislation to undermine union financing while framing anti-union policies in freedom language—workers’ “right” to benefit from union representation without paying for it. The organization coordinates with ALEC (founded 1973) and later provides on-the-ground lobbying support during right-to-work campaigns in Indiana (2012), Michigan (2012), West Virginia (2016), and Kentucky (2017). The NRTWC represents the formalization of corporate anti-union coordination 18 years before ALEC, establishing the organizational infrastructure and messaging framework that corporate funders use to systematically destroy union power from 35% membership (1954 peak) to 10% (2024).