The absurdity of calling their proposals "right to work" should be obvious--if we had the right to work, then any person who is willing and able to work should have guaranteed access to a reasonable amount of land, tools, and organizational services in exchange for a reasonable amount of production. Their proposals do nothing to provide us with the right to work. We still need to permission of business/land/capital owners in order to work (and sometimes we need permission from the government , but that's a different story).

So if their reforms are not a guarantee of a right, then what are they? They are a prohibition, and a restriction of our rights. This is clear from the title of the proposed amendment in Colorado: "Prohibition on Certain Conditions of Employment". The real bullshit comes from the fact that these "certain conditions" are very limited, such that they don't include any of the myriad ways in which employers take advantage of or degrade their employees, the only condition covered relates to one of the most successful strategies that workers use to bargain with their employers: unionization.

Another point about these laws is that the "closed/union/agency shop" (which is prohibited) only arises due to a contract between the employer and a third party (the union), yet employers regularly enter into contracts that affect the conditions of their employees. Again, we see that the only contract that is prohibited is the contract that is made with the workers themselves. To make this proposal even more egregious, it doesn't just nullify any contracts containing these conditions, but it actually criminalizes any attempt ("directly or indirectly") to use such contracts.

I believe that the above observations are sufficient to refute the assertion that these "right to work" laws do nothing to promote the freedom of workers or protect their rights. Given that those assertions are refuted, there is no need to oppose the "freedom" argument by appealing to an alternative value such as "equality"(or "democracy"), as David Sirota suggested we should. This rhetorical strategy just reinforces the ruling class' mythology that freedom and equality are necessarily at odds with each other, thereby dividing the people into two hostile camps. In reality, freedom and equality are synergistic as was recognized by Socrates , and in the authors of our state constitutions , who often placed "freedom" and "equality" right next to each other in their declarations of rights.