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Republicans in legislature file bills targeting public sector unions [1]

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Date: 2024-03-12  

Republicans in the Louisiana State Legislature have filed a batch of bills for the spring session that would substantially weaken unions representing public employees in the state if passed. Perhaps the most consequential such proposal would prohibit local and state governments from engaging in collective bargaining with public sector unions, other than those representing employees of law enforcement agencies or fire departments.

As lawmakers get to work in the session’s first week, some worry that the bills preview a coordinated attack on unionized public employees, especially the roughly 50,000 public school teachers in the state.

“What this looks like is a coordinated, purposeful attack on workers in the state of Louisiana,” said Britain Forsyth, legislative coordinator for Step Up Louisiana, a labor advocacy group. “I’m sure there are a lot of Republican elected officials, donors and powerful people talking to each other because gutting unions is not popular, even among Republican voters.”

As it stands, there are nearly a dozen bills that target public sector employees, their unions, or general union power awaiting hearings in the House and Senate labor committees.

Taken together, these bills would introduce a host of laws that would weaken public sector unions by banning the automatic deduction of dues from public employees’ paychecks, restricting unions’ ability to spend on political activity, requiring bi-annual elections to recertify unions, and – most critically – restricting or prohibiting union activities altogether.

These laws could weaken teachers’ unions in the state, many of which have been expanding their membership to include educators and workers at charter schools. The laws are also a direct threat to New Orleans city workers, who, just last year, won the right to organize as the City Council passed an ordinance creating a timeline and process for the city to collectively bargain with the newly recognized workers.

Currently, just seven states have laws that restrict or prohibit public sector collective bargaining, said Jennifer Sherer, director of the State Worker Power Initiative at the Economic Policy Institute. The last several years have seen a number of efforts in conservative states to roll back public employees’ ability to organize or bargain.

“Over the past decade, we have seen repeated politically motivated attacks on public sector employees in states where Republicans have majorities in the legislature,” she said. “This introduces all kinds of unfairness and unevenness into our labor markets and into our economy.”

Public sector wages lag behind private sector wages, but the discrepancy between the two sectors widens in states where collective bargaining is banned outright. In recent years, the state government has struggled to fill positions as has New Orleans, in part because of lower wages. In addition to the public-private pay discrepancy, these bills could have a disproportionate impact along racial and gender lines, as women and Black workers make up a disproportionate share of the state and local public sector workforce. In Louisiana, 81 percent of public school teachers are women, according to data from the state Department of Education.

“Louisiana already ranks at the bottom of states for gender parity and employment and the best states for women to work,” said Christina LeBlanc, an economic opportunity policy analyst at Invest in Louisiana. “And when you think about the target populations that these bills are touching…you’re talking about some of the most hardworking and marginalized workers in our economy who are being targeted by these bills.”

Many of the bills attacking public sector unions have been sponsored by either Rep. Raymond Crews, R-Bossier City, or Sen. Alan Seabaugh, R-Shreveport, the respective chairs of the House and Senate labor committees.

Crews has sponsored House Bill 572, the bill that would prohibit collective bargaining with most types of public sector unions, as well as the companion bill HB 571, which would prohibit government agencies from spending any public funds on “designated labor activities,” including contract negotiations. Seabaugh’s bills this session include Senate Bill 299, which would prohibit state and local governments from recognizing or collectively bargaining with any labor union, and SB 331, which would remove union dues as an authorized payroll deduction.

Both have been endorsed by or have received support from business and conservative groups. One of those groups — Americans for Prosperity the national conservative group funded by billionaire Charles Koch — spent thousands of dollars last year to back Seabaugh’s most recent senate bid, state campaign finance records show.

Americans for Prosperity is among a handful of “right-wing dark money groups” working nationwide to push for legislation targeting public sector unionization, Sherer said.

“Groups like Americans for Prosperity have been playing a central role and have staff and lobbyists on the ground in a lot of states at this point,” Sherer said. According to state filings, Americans for Prosperity currently has four registered lobbyists in Louisiana. The group did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

In addition to their affiliations with Americans for Prosperity, both Crews and Seabaugh

have received thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Koch Industries, the conglomerate headed by Charles Koch.

Politicians supported by Americans for Prosperity have managed to push similar legislation in other states. The typical game plan for this strategy is to push for right-to-work legislation, then for policies that erode public-sector union power – like not allowing dues to be withdrawn from paychecks – and then, finally, to prohibit collective bargaining outright.

Sherer also pointed out the influence of the State Policy Network (SPN), which a report by the Center for Media and Democracy described as a network of think tanks pushing “an extreme-right agenda that aims to… restrict workers’ rights,” among other policies. In Louisiana, the Pelican Institute for Public Policy is the affiliate member of the SPN and has published reports arguing against collective bargaining for city workers and criticizing teachers’ unions.

Crews recently spoke at the Pelican Institute’s 2024 Solutions Summit, where he was featured on a panel titled “Government Union Reforms to Empower Workers.”

The Pelican Institute currently has three lobbyists registered with the state. Crews and the Pelican Institute did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday. Seabaugh’s office acknowledged a request for comment but did not agree to an interview or provide a statement in response to questions from Verite News.

In Louisiana, there have been efforts in the past to weaken public sector unions through very similar policies as those proposed in this session. A bill that would ban automatic deductions of union dues from the paychecks of public employees came up in 2013 and again in 2015.

Reporting at the time revealed that a representative of the Louisiana Association for Business and Industry detailed the group’s political intentions for the bill in a closed-door meeting, saying, “If you control the money flow, you control the success. […] When you cut off the unions’ funding, they lose their stroke.”

But both attempts fizzled out after failing to garner enough votes in legislative committees.

This year, with a Republican supermajority in both chambers of the legislature and ultra-conservative Gov. Jeff Landry leading the state, labor advocates worry that such legislation will gain traction.

“My experience in politics has taught me not to try to predict things that I don’t have hard data about,” Forsyth said. “But I imagine that this slew of anti-labor bills would not be being presented if [legislators] were not confident in a Jeff Landry signature.”

The anti-union bills face some backlash from other elected officials.

“You have a legislature that, every year that I can think back, takes out teacher pay raises,” said Rep. Delisha Boyd, a New Orleans Democrat. Boyd blamed low wages for the ongoing teacher shortage experienced in many parishes. “Because the kids aren’t properly educated — that’s why the crime is highest here. … You can jail with kids all you want right now, but if the system doesn’t change, they just push out more criminals.”

For her part, Boyd introduced two bills this year that she said would boost the workforce. One of them aims to raise the statewide minimum wage up to $14 over time, while the other tackles discrimination based on gender identity and sexuality. However, similar versions of her bills have been rejected before.

Effects on teachers, City Hall workers

The reason why the state government has such influence on public employees is because public sector employees have different labor rights than private sector employees. While private sector workers are protected by the National Labor Relations Act, public sector workers do not have that same protection. Instead, there’s a patchwork of state and local laws that shape collective bargaining rights for public employees.

Teachers unions, which represent tens of thousands of school employees around the state, would be particularly hard-hit should the bills prohibiting or restricting public sector union activity pass.

The Southern Regional Education Board found that K-12 teachers in Louisiana made about $54,097 on average for the 2021-2022 school year — $12,648 less than the national average, while still a bit more than in Arkansas and Mississippi. The unions have been lobbying for years to increase teacher pay in the state, though they have had limited success. But union leaders say that weakening teachers unions would remove educators’ voices from policy debates, to the detriment of schools, students and education workers across the state.

“These bills do nothing to assist in making education the best it can be,” said Tia Mills, president of the Louisiana Association of Educators, a union representing over 18,000 public education employees. “They focus on weakening the collective voice of the employees who spend the most time with our students, children, and grandchildren across the state.”

Studies show that restrictions on public sector collective bargaining result in a relative decline in spending on teacher salaries and benefits. In addition to teachers, other workers in the public school system could be impacted, including bus drivers, social workers, behavioral specialists, cafeteria workers, clerks and secretaries – all of whom are represented by the Louisiana Association for Educators.

“The unions being part of those conversations is essential,” Mills said. “We want to make sure that we have all voices at the table.”

She noted that Louisiana has become a national leader in educational recovery following the pandemic, largely, she says, due to its educational workforce. However, it still struggles with hiring and retaining staff at public schools. She says these bills could make it difficult for Louisiana to continue the collective work it’s done to improve educational outcomes and only make it even harder to hire and retain public school staff.

“The bills being proposed are not a move in the right direction,” Mills said.

The anti-union bills, if passed, would also undercut recent local legislation in New Orleans affirming the rights of city employees to organize.

“Obviously, we feel that this is a direct attack on the working class of Louisiana, on public employees in New Orleans, and on [New Orleans City Workers Organizing Committee] in particular,” Lee Abbott, a public librarian and organizer with NOCWOC, said.

Last year, the New Orleans City Council passed an ordinance codifying the right of city workers to organize, creating timelines and processes for city workers to collectively bargain with the city. This came a few years after the city workers’ existing union went dormant.

“We led the work to establish a public sector ‘Right to Organize’ ordinance that codified how city employees can have a union recognized and obligates the city to negotiate a contract with the unions that the workers select,” Abbott said. “The Republicans want to take that away from the workers.”

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