A key element of Worker’s Choice is that it will not affect a state’s established collective bargaining laws. One and only one union will be able to represent all union members in a bargaining unit, and that union will still negotiate wages, hours, working conditions, and anything they could negotiate previously. The only difference is that there would be no duty of fair representation, and unions would no longer be forced to represent and provide services to nonmember employees.
Since most states’ public sector collective bargaining laws grant exclusive bargaining privileges to one union for an employee group, workers who opt of out of their union will not be able to organize into their own separate union. In other words, there will be only one union that can organize workers in a particular bargaining unit. This is important, because a “one-or-none” arrangement avoids the problems associated with micro-unionism, an issue that is starting to cause issues in the private sector and explained in more detail in the following section.