Over objections from union leaders, a bill to limit how public-sector unions gather membership fees cleared a Louisiana Senate committee Wednesday, advancing a key plank of Republican efforts targeting labor leaders' already limited power at the state Capitol.
Senate Bill 331 would bar those unions — including teacher, firefighter, police and city employee groups — from collecting dues through payroll deductions, an option many public-sector employers offer for workers to pay insurance premiums, bonds and other costs including union fees. Other versions of the legislation include exemptions for the politically powerful police and firefighter unions.
The Senate Labor and Industrial Relations Committee approved the bill on a 5-2 party-line vote. Five Republicans voted for it, describing the measure, sponsored by committee chair, Sen. Alan Seabaugh, R-Shreveport, as a way for workers to more easily opt out of paying dues if they don't want to join a union.
Under current law, public agencies are "going to have to actually pay someone to transfer the money to the union, and I don’t think that’s the public’s responsibility,” Seabaugh said.
But union leaders said the bill would harm their organizations' financial health by eliminating one of the main tools at their disposal to collect fees that members pay in exchange for receiving union benefits.
“It is the most efficient way for public employees to pay their union dues," Louis Reine, head of the Louisiana AFL-CIO, told the Senate Labor and Industrial Relations Committee.
Larry Carter, president of the Louisiana Federation of Teachers, one of the state's two largest teacher unions, argued the bill could be unconstitutional, saying it unfairly singles out unions for exclusion from the payroll deduction process.
It would also make it harder for "underpaid, overworked and often underappreciated" public sector workers to participate in their unions, Carter said, calling it "an example of really reaching into peoples’ personal decisions and choices.”
Two Democrats on the committee voted against Seabaugh's bill, questioning whether it would withstand potential legal challenges like those leveled against similar legislation in other Republican states. Sen. Jean-Paul Coussan, R-Lafayette, briefly expressed concerns to Seabaugh that the bill would open the state to legal risk. He later voted for the bill with the committee's four other Republicans.
Seabaugh pushed back at the idea that the bill would stop unions' collections.
“I don’t think anything in the bill stops you from collecting union dues," he said.
SB 331 heads now to the full Senate. Reine, the AFL-CIO leader, noted that no public agencies spoke in favor of the legislation in the Senate committee. The bill has support of business lobbyists including the Pelican Institute, a conservative policy group, and the powerful Louisiana Association of Business and Industry.
It is one of at least 15 bills filed in the state Legislature's ongoing session that aim to enact a swath of conservative goals for the state's labor policies.
Others target unions' ability to bargain with bosses, the system for compensating workers sidelined by injury and a requirement that child laborers must receive lunch breaks, among other legislation.
Unions, Democratic lawmakers and labor advocates for eight years had staved off those efforts with help of former Gov. John Bel Edwards, a pro-union Democrat. Now Republicans are seeking to capitalize on the election last fall of GOP Gov. Jeff Landry and to wield the strength of House and Senate supermajorities they secured last year to power through a raft of conservative priorities.
Those include the labor bills — policies that GOP lawmakers and business lobbyists say should strengthen employers’ hands and limit improper flow of tax dollars.
The swath of bills targeting unions is so expansive that some conservatives have privately expressed concern that the bills are too extreme, political insiders say. While ultra-conservative members of the Legislature hope to seize on Landry's ascent to push through as many political and policy priorities as possible, others fear that approach could stymie certain conservative goals.