A case in point: Virginia was among the first states in the nation to outlaw the closed shop—that is, to outlaw contracts that required union membership of employees. Months before a conservative Congress passed the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, called “the Slave Labor Act” by critics and passed over President Harry Truman’s veto, the state’s governor had signed a pioneering “right-to-work” law to weaken labor unions.
