Appointed as arbiter to settle the Ford Strike of 1945, Rand concluded that both federal and provincial labor law made strong trade unions national policy.
If workers were allowed to opt out of paying union dues, the free rider problem would undermine this policy.
Rand went further to argue that the free rider problem undermines workplace order by causing resentment between union and non-union employees.
By 1997, the federal government and six provinces (British Columbia, Manitoba, Newfoundland, Ontario, Quebec, and Saskatchewan) imposed the Rand formula on labor relations.
Japanese courts have wrestled with the two conflicting legal values, and found that the right to organize is superior to the right to freedom of association.
Although this may appear to impose the union shop, in practice defining what constitutes a "similar type of worker" has proven too difficult and Section 17 is rarely enforced.
[11] Under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), as amended by the Taft-Hartley Act, and held by the Supreme Court in Communications Workers of America v. Beck, in a union security agreement, unions are authorized by statute to collect from non-members only those fees and dues necessary to perform its duties as a collective bargaining representative known as agency fees.
[12] Compelling payment of agency fees from non-union employees in the public sector was held unconstitutional in Janus v. AFSCME, in June 2018.
While a union shop agreement that, by its literal terms, requires an employee to become a member in good standing might appear to be unlawful on its face and therefore unenforceable, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the courts have uniformly interpreted such clauses to require no more than what the law permits (such as payment of dues).
The union may not demand that an employee be fired for failure to pay extraordinary assessments that are not part of regularly, uniformly imposed dues.
The LMRDA sets standards for the procedures that the union must follow when asking members to approve an increase in dues.