Under Article I, Section 8, clause 17 of the US Constitution, Congress may exercise legislative authority over lands that states have ceded and Congress accepted to form a seat for the federal government or permitted the federal government to purchase to erect forts, dockyards and other "needful" buildings. (U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 17). Congress may acquire derivative legislative power over territory in a state from that state through:

(Kleppe v. New Mexico, 426 U.S. 529, 542 (1976).)

Depending on the terms of the legislation, deeds or other mechanisms under which the federal government acquired the state land, this derivative legislative power in these federal enclaves may range from:

(Kleppe v. New Mexico, 426 U.S. at 542 (1976); Paul v. United States, 371 U.S. 245, 264 (1963), citing James v. Dravo Contracting Co., 302 U.S. 134, 141-42 (1937).)

In Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers, the Supreme Court found that Section 14(b) of the LMRA does not allow enforcement of right-to-work laws where the employment relationship has a principal job situs is outside of a state having those laws (426 U.S. at 418). Applying its job situs test, the Supreme Court held that the Texas right-to-work laws did not void an agency-shop agreement covering a bargaining unit of unlicensed seamen, all who worked primarily on the high seas and only 10% to 20% of the time within the territorial bounds of Texas, even though:

(Oil, Chem. & Atomic Workers, 426 U.S. at 420.)

In Lord v. Local Union No. 2088, Electrical Workers, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit addressed whether Florida's right-to-work law applied within a federal enclave over which the federal government had exclusive jurisdiction (646 F.2d 1057, 1058 (5th Cir. 1981) 646 F.2d at 1058). The court acknowledged that in the conflict between federal labor law and policy expressed in Section 8(a)(3) of the NLRA and state right-to-work laws, Section 14(b) of the LMRA generally resolves the conflict by directing that the federal law and policy yield to state laws (646 F.2d at 1062, citing Oil, Chem. & Atomic Workers, 426 U.S. at 416-417).

However, the court found that Section 14(b)'s directive that federal labor law and policy yield to a state right-to-work law applied only to areas where the state had power to legislate. Since Florida lacked legislative authority in the federal enclave in question, its right-to-work laws could not supplant conflicting federal labor law and policy expressed in Section 8(a)(3) of the NLRA and were unenforceable there. (646 F.2d at 1062-63.)

In a case preceding Lord, the Northern District of Texas similarly held that in a federal enclave, such as a military base, if the state ceded full legislative jurisdiction to Congress when ceding the land to the federal government, the governing law is:

In Vincent, the court concluded that Texas right-to-work laws did not apply to General Dynamics' employees who built military aircraft at an air force base plant on land over which the federal government predominantly had exclusive legislative jurisdiction. The plant developed and expanded on land to which different degrees of federal jurisdiction applied but nearly 98% of the bargaining unit employees worked on land subject to exclusive federal jurisdiction. The court applied federal union shop laws to the 2% of the bargaining unit that worked on plant land over which Texas had concurrent jurisdiction because:

(Vincent, 427 F. Supp. at 789.)

Conversely, when states reserve concurrent jurisdiction in transferring land to form federal enclaves, the state right-to-work laws trump federal labor law and policy. For example:

The US Army base at Fort Rucker, Alabama is home to the US Army Aviation Center of Excellence. Like most military bases, there are civilian employees of military contractors providing various services, including manufacturing, testing and training armed forces personnel on how to use military equipment and vehicles. The International Association of Machinists has represented many of these contractors' employees.