Republicans in the Louisiana Legislature have filed a batch of bills for the spring session that would substantially weaken unions representing public employees in the state if passed, Louisiana Illuminator reports.
One 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,” says 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.
