You are thinking of "at-will" employment [0]. That is a separate issue from "right-to-work" which has to do with labor unions [1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-work_law

"Right to work" has everything to do with labor unions.

> "Freedom to work" and "Right to work" are both Orwellian euphemistic terms, to be honest.

The latter is essentially a term of art, the former is not. Using the former is imprecise and confusing.

> Realistically, it's best described as "mutual right to terminate employment without cause" or just "right to terminate".

That is a completely different concept called at-will employment. RTW is about union shops (not to be confused with closed shops, which have been illegal in the US since Taft-Hartley)

They're euphemisms, but I am not sure they're Orwellian. How would you say they're Orwellian?

It's better to just allow people to name their own movement, otherwise, you end up endlessly fighting about names (i.e. are people 'pro-life' or 'anti-choice' and 'pro-murder'/'anti-life' and 'pro-choice').

> They're euphemisms, but I am not sure they're Orwellian. How would you say they're Orwellian?

Right to work laws do not in any way provide a right to work.

They do though

No, not in any sense of the word. There's no guarantee that you'll get any job let alone a specific one in an RTW state. Therefore it's not a right to anything. It's just union busting.

Especially since RTW legislation is not about closed shops (which are illegal at the federal level), so these were jobs you could always get.

It does mean the opposite of what the phrase might normally imply.

I don't blame you for confusing the terms but I am so upset that the average person upvoted you without checking. You have the wrong term, and I'm going to comment here just to give people an extra chance to know that.

Or perhaps "right to freeload"?

…

What?

That's the whole point of 'right to work.' Allow new employees to freeload on the union-negotiated rates for the shop without requiring them to actually join the union. Who would pay if they got the benefits anyway? So the union gets defunded.

Interestingly, back when Jesse Jackson was in the news a lot, he did a lot of advocating for Right-to-Work legislation. The idea was that unions were racially discriminating against blacks, and RtW laws prevented this.

Goes to show... something, I guess.