Posted on 01/08/2022 8:32:29 AM PST by ChicagoConservative27
Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) on Friday vetoed a bill that would have allowed farmers in the state to unionize, the Portland Press Herald reported.
The proposal called for agriculture workers to be able to organize and bargain for wages, hours and working conditions.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
If the business is splintered like farms, if the business doesn’t have a main gate, then unions are irrelevant.
I did not know that you needed the state’s permission to form a union.
I’m anti union but I thought the right to assemble was in the first amendment.
I guarantee you won’t like the real reason the rat did this.
Interesting...
...and that reason is?
The article is imprecise; the bill was to allow agricultural employees (not farmers) to unionize with collective-bargaining rights and protections against being fired by their employers for engaging in union activities (or other self-organized “protected concerted” activities, even without a union). Agricultural workers were specifically exempted from coverage by the 1935 federal National Labor Relations Act. Each state can determine whether there can be protections similar to the NLRA for agricultural workers; California is one of the few that has them.
Even without a state law for agricultural workers, they can of course form a union (under freedom of association) but an agricultural employer would not be required by law to bargain collectively with such a union, and the workers would not be protected against being fired for union activities. I practiced labor law for 35 years.
Labor union Maine AFL-CIO criticized Mills’s decision, claiming that the bill would protect farm workers from abuses like sexual harassment and wage theft.
Laws do not protect you from things. They provide recourse for when people violate the law. I am not ware of any cases of sexual harassment and wage theft in the Maine Farming industry, but all this law could do is provide recourse after such a violation.
I lave here in Maine and for the politics of the state and this article is the first I even heard about farm staff wanting to unionize.
The Maine AFL-CIO is certainly not going to support her opposition, former Governor Paul LePage so this is just a talking point to appease folks who are not even part of their union.
I am at a bit of loss as to why this happened now as the legislature just went back into session last Wednesday.
It's not exactly that, but there are legal structures that force employees to join the union, if one is in place, while other states have a legal structure that allows an individual to "opt out." So called "right to work" states have some unionized facilities, but fewer than states that are not "right to work."
Thank you for that explanation.
I got suckered by the headline, although I violated Free Republic practices and read the entire article as well.
Most reporters don’t write their own headlines. It’s amusing to see how interest is ginned up to create discussion.
Using “farmers” instead of blueberry pickers or potato pickers achieved that goal.
Follow the money…the farmers have a better lobby than the the pickers.
I don’t know but we are taking about a typical rat so we can guess.
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