Republican lawmakers in the US state of Georgia passed a bill on Wednesday to penalize employers who make it easier for their employees to form unions. The bill was submitted to Republican Governor Brian Kemp for his signature.
Senate Bill 362 would prohibit companies from receiving government incentives if they voluntarily recognize a union, rather than requiring workers to vote in a secret ballot. The goal is to prevent a process called “card check,” which allows workers to unionize simply by proving that a majority supports them through signed union cards.
The state Senate passed the bill last month by a vote of 31 to 23. The House passed it on Wednesday by a vote of 96 to 78. Both votes were largely along party lines.
“Trade unions far prefer to achieve voluntary recognition rather than undergo an electoral process that can be marked by intimidation and abuse.”
Although Kemp has indicated he supports the bill, it will likely be challenged in court on the grounds that it violates federal labor law. Longstanding interpretations of the National Labor Relations Act, the 1935 law that governs collective bargaining in the private sector, allow employers to recognize a union and begin bargaining immediately if workers have clearly expressed their wishes.
Unions prefer to gain voluntary recognition rather than undergo an electoral process that can be fraught with intimidation and abuse. During election campaigns, workers are often forced into employers' propaganda meetings, while union leaders are subject to retaliation and even dismissal. The process can also result in long delays and litigation.
President Joe Biden’s progressive National Labor Relations Board members have sought to encourage more employers voluntarily acknowledge Trade unions, such as Microsoft, Major League Baseball and many media companies have done so recently. Unions like the United Auto Workers sometimes succeed in getting employers to voluntarily recognize unions in future workplaces in their collective bargaining agreements.
But employers' associations and Republican lawmakers have been fighting against voluntary recognition for years, arguing that workers are being intimidated into signing their union cards.
Georgia Republican Governor Brian Kemp (pictured here in Atlanta) has said he supports the bill to ban subsidies to companies that voluntarily recognize unions.
Megan Varner via Getty Images
The Georgia bill is part of a broader Republican effort to strengthen unions amid a rise in organization And Work interruptions recently. In a speech In January, Kemp lamented major labor strikes in 2023 to the Georgia Chamber of Commerce, saying that “activists” were trying to “attack job creators” and “bring the free market to an abrupt halt.”
The Associated Press reported last month that the right-leaning American Legislative Exchange Council is pushing Republican-led states to pass laws banning subsidies for employers who voluntarily recognize unions. A bill similar to the one in Georgia passed the Tennessee legislature last year and was signed by Republican Gov. Bill Lee.
Like other states, Georgia offers employers a number of tax incentives and economic development subsidies to move to the state. According to the Subsidy Tracker The biggest beneficiaries of state and local awards in Georgia were automakers Hyundai and Rivian, which received awards valued at $2.1 billion and $1.5 billion, respectively, in 2022 and are operated by the nonprofit organization Good Jobs First.
Under Georgia law, any company receiving subsidies would lose them if they voluntarily recognized a union.
“The basic idea of labor preemption is that states cannot do such a thing.”
-Benjamin Sachs, Harvard Law School
Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, called the bill “appalling” on X on Wednesday and said it “attacks the basic freedoms” of both workers and employers. She also said it violates a “long-standing precedent” under the National Labor Relations Act.
Benjamin Sachs, a labor law professor at Harvard Law School, told HuffPost he believes the laws in Georgia and Tennessee would likely be overridden by federal law. States can set their own collective bargaining policies when acting as market participants — for example, mandating union work on a federally funded project to ensure there is no disruption — but Sachs sees no “market-based reason” for Georgia to block Card Check.
“The basic idea of labor preemption is that states are not allowed to do this,” he said.
As Sachs noted on the legal blog OnLabor, the conservatives pushing these bills should be careful what they wish for. If Georgia's law passes, liberal states could similarly create economic incentives to favor unions. For example, they could try to make benefits contingent on employers voluntarily recognizing a union or allowing unions access to company property during a union campaign.
If Georgia's legislation passes, Sachs wrote, “states would be free to experiment with a variety of ways to make it easier for workers to form and join unions.”
