[redbeard0x0a]

Where did the closed shop restrictions come from, did it come from anti-union lobbying or some think tank somewhere? This smells completely like "the government is useless", then going in and defunding things that the government is responsible for.

[thejynxed]

Such rules come in at the state level and are usually pushed for by the large national unions to bully and push out local and regional small unions. Every major union from UAW to SEIU has been guilty of this.

[claudeganon]

This is not true. Unionization based on enterprise-level votes was put in place with NRLA in 1935. The NRLA and Taft-Hartley would have to be amended or replaced to change this. I have no idea if large unions have ever lobbied against replacing them at the Federal level, but there hasn’t (in recent history) been any serious push to do so that these unions would oppose.

[claudeganon]

Your intuition is correct. Workplace-based bargaining was put in place with NRLA in 1935, which requires that unions be formed on the basis of shop votes. This was done to prevent labor from having the same political power that sector-wide unions have in Europe. The sector-wide Hollywood unions were grandfathered in, which is why they remain as successful and powerful as they are today.