Editing Open shop (section)

== Legal status ==
===United States===
The open shop is legal in the [[United States]]. Employers are under no legal compulsion to enter into union security agreements.

The open shop is enforced in those states that have adopted [[right-to-work laws]]. In these states, employers are barred from enforcing union security arrangements and may not fire an employee for failure to pay union dues.

===Canada===
The term open shop is also used similarly in [[Canada]], mostly in reference to construction contractors that have at least a partially non-union workforce. Canadians enjoy the freedom to associate, guaranteed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, inherently including the right not to associate.<ref>Decided in a Quebec Supreme Court case ''[[R v Advance Cutting & Coring Ltd|R. v. Advance Cutting & Coring Ltd.]]'', in which eight of the nine judges concluded that the freedom to not associate was a logical corollary to the freedom of association.</ref>

In various [[Provinces and territories of Canada|Canadian province]]s, certain 'open shop' organizations have formed. Many of these organizations claim that small contractors are not adequately protected by current labour legislation.

As labour law is a provincial jurisdiction in Canada, the laws vary from province to province.  However, there is some common ground. Despite opposition from open shop contractors, in Ontario, the Liberal government recently{{When|date=April 2021}} reinstituted the card-based certification system that was in place for most of the post-World War II period. Card-based certification was reinstated only for the construction industry. It allows workers to certify an exclusive bargaining agent on the basis of membership, sometimes known as "majority sign-up". Some observers claim that this system creates a risk of employees being misled by business agents. Others assert that it overcomes the natural advantage that employers in opposition to unionization have over their employees.<ref name="labourlawblog1">{{cite web | url=http://labourlawblog.typepad.com/managementupdates/2005/02/cardbased_versu.html | title=Thoughts from a Management Lawyer: Card-Based Versus Vote-Based Certification | access-date=August 24, 2012 |website=Labourlawblog.typepad.com| author=Fitzgibbon, Michael}}</ref>

Some of these associations permit construction contractors that are unionized to join. Several companies whose employees are represented by the [[Christian Labour Association of Canada]] or [[CLAC]], a union with non-traditional rules of membership, are members of the association. CLAC's roots trace to the Christian labour movement in the Netherlands.