GOP lawmakers in Georgia passed a bill Wednesday to punish employers that make it easier for workers to form unions, sending the legislation to Republican Gov. Brian Kemp for his signature.
Senate Bill 362 would bar companies from receiving state economic incentives if they voluntarily recognize a union instead of requiring employees to vote in a secret-ballot election. It is aimed at discouraging a process known as “card check,” whereby workers can unionize simply by showing that there’s majority support in the form of signed union cards.
The legislation passed the state Senate last month by a vote of 31-23. It cleared the House on Wednesday 96-78. Both votes fell mostly along party lines.
“Unions much prefer to win voluntary recognition than go through an election process that can be rife with intimidation and abuse.”
Although Kemp has indicated that he backs the legislation, it is likely to face legal challenges on the grounds that it conflicts with federal labor law. Long-standing interpretation of the National Labor Relations Act, the 1935 law governing private sector collective bargaining, allows for employers to recognize a union and immediately start bargaining when employees have made their wishes clear.
Unions much prefer to win voluntary recognition than go through an election process that can be rife with intimidation and abuse. During the campaign period, workers often get corralled into employers’ propagandistic captive-audience meetings, while union leaders end up singled out for retaliation and even firings. The process can also lead to long delays and litigation.
President Joe Biden’s progressive appointees at the National Labor Relations Board have tried to encourage more employers to voluntarily recognize unions, as Microsoft, Major League Baseball and many media companies have recently done. Unions like the United Auto Workers sometimes succeed in getting employers to agree in contracts to voluntarily recognize unions at work sites they will open in the future.
But employer groups and Republican lawmakers have pushed back against voluntary recognition for years, claiming that workers are bullied into signing union cards.
Megan Varner via Getty Images
The Georgia bill is part of a broader GOP effort to hold unions back amid an uptick in organizing and work stoppages lately. In a speech to the Georgia Chamber of Commerce in January, Kemp bemoaned the large worker strikes of 2023 and said that “activists” were trying to “attack job creators” and “see the free market brought to a screeching halt.”
The Associated Press reported last month that the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council has been pushing Republican-led states to implement laws barring subsidies for employers that voluntarily recognize unions. A bill similar to the Georgia one passed the Tennessee legislature last year and was signed by GOP Gov. Bill Lee.
Like other states, Georgia offers employers a slew of tax incentives and economic development subsidies to move to the state. According to the subsidy tracker run by the nonprofit Good Jobs First, the largest beneficiaries of Georgia state and local awards have been the automakers Hyundai and Rivian, which in 2022 netted awards worth $2.1 billion and $1.5 billion, respectively.
Any companies receiving subsidies would forfeit them by voluntarily recognizing a union under the Georgia legislation.
“The basic idea of labor preemption is states can’t do stuff like this.”
– Benjamin Sachs, Harvard Law School
Liz Shuler, the president of the AFL-CIO labor federation, took to X on Wednesday to call the bill “appalling,” saying that it “attacks the fundamental freedoms” of both workers and employers. She also said that it violates “long-held precedent” under the National Labor Relations Act.
Benjamin Sachs, a labor law professor at Harvard Law School, told HuffPost that he believes the Georgia and Tennessee legislation would probably be preempted by federal law. States can set their own collective bargaining policies when they’re acting as market participants — for instance, requiring union labor on a state-funded project to ensure that there aren’t disruptions — but Sachs doesn’t see a “market-based reason” for Georgia to try to block card check.
“The basic idea of labor preemption is states can’t do stuff like this,” he said.
As Sachs noted on the legal blog OnLabor, the conservatives pushing these bills should be careful what they wish for. If the Georgia legislation stands, then liberal states could wield economic incentives in a similar way to benefit unions. For instance, they could try to predicate benefits on requiring employers to voluntarily recognize a union or grant unions access to company property during an organizing campaign.
If the Georgia legislation survives, Sachs wrote, then “states will be free to experiment with a whole host of ways to better enable workers to form and join unions.”
