Mark Gruenberg at People’s World reports three recent Pro-Worker wins – two laws enacted in New Jersey and a prior one in Minnesota upheld in a Federal Appeals Court.
State and Local laws are critical to labor. Without Democratic Governor Phil Murphy and a Pro-Worker Legislature in New Jersey, the law banning firms from forcing Workers to attend so-called Captive Audience Meetings would never have passed. Murphy signed it on September 4th. In those meetings, bosses and their hired persuaders, aka Union-Busters, can lie, browbeat, intimidate and threaten Workers while campaigning against Organizing Drives.
Murphy also signed legislation that day mandating Social Studies courses in grades 6-12 in the Garden State to include “age-appropriate” lessons on Labor History. That includes “the history of Organized Labor, notable Strikes throughout history, Unionization Drives and the collective bargaining process and existing legal protections in the workplace.”
It’s also safe to say that without Governor Tim Walz, an Education Minnesota Teacher/Member on leave, and without State Attorney General Keith Ellison, his strong defense, and a prior narrowly Pro-Worker State Legislative majority, there would be no Minnesota ban on Captive Audience Meetings. Lawmakers in St. Paul passed it, Walz signed it.
Corporate lobbies tried to kill it in the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Ellison defended it -and Workers won. There, also on September 4th, three Republican-named Appellate Judges in St. Louis voted 2-to-1 for Minnesota’s law.
Anti-Worker President Donald Trump named one of the two who voted for it, as well as the dissenter. Ellison and his Attorney General’s Office strongly defended the Minnesota law.
