A measure prohibiting collective bargaining agreements that require employees to join a labor union and pay fees or dues is back before the state legislature. Although so-called Right to Work measures failed 39 times in NH, a Republican majority in both houses and a governor who has been supportive of the measure in the past may finally shift the balance of power.
Senate Bill 61 states, “It shall be unlawful for any employer to deduct from the wages, earnings, or compensation of any employee any dues, fees, assessments, or other charges, to be held for, transferred to, or paid over to a labor organization, unless the employee has first presented, and the employer has received, a signed written authorization.”
Bill supporters, which include the Business and Industry Association of NH (BIA), say Right to Work is about fairness.
“Employees who object to union representation because they don’t see its value shouldn’t be forced to join or pay for union representation as a condition of employment,” says David Juvet, senior vice president of public policy for the BIA. “Passing this bill is an extraordinary opportunity for the Granite State to separate itself from every other state in the Northeast.
Employers in New Hampshire and around the country that will not consider the state for growth or expansion would do so with approval of SB 61.”
But with the state’s manufacturers struggling to fill thousands of jobs, opponents are skeptical that Right to Work will attract new businesses. Glenn Brackett, president of the NH chapter of the AFL-CIO, says supporters make the same “bogus” claims each year about growing the NH economy and protecting worker freedoms.
“Right to Work has been in the legislature every year for 40 years, and we haven’t had one business come before us and say, ‘Yes. If you pass Right to Work, we’ll come to New Hampshire,” Brackett says. “Not once in the past 40 years has that happened. In New Hampshire, it is not about attracting businesses, it is about attracting workers and Right to Work does not attract workers.”
The Josiah Bartlett Center, a conservative think tank, states the bill does not prohibit collective bargaining, ban union organizing or in any way prevent employees from unionizing or employers from signing union contracts.
Union Supporters Push Back
But in a letter to NH legislators signed by four NH businesses, the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America argue if the measure is passed it, “will intrude on our businesses’ ability to freely negotiate contracts that we determine are in the best interests of our companies.” The signatories go on to state, “Right to Work” isn’t about workers’ rights, instead it is an effort to weaken unions.”
One of the business owners who signed the letter, Lance Mazzariello, president of Finish Installation in Salem, says people often overlook the broader benefits that unions provide. Mazzariello credits the union system for the position he now holds, recalling how early in his career he found himself under-employed and turned to a friend in construction. He was able to get free training through the union and worked his way up, eventually becoming a partner and division president.
“I was able to craft a real career and develop a genuine skill set that no one can ever take away, that I owe no money on, no student loan debt,” says Mazzariello. He adds union members have health care coverage and, with a child who required advanced medical care, he says he might have lost his home had it not been for his union health insurance.
“I’ve worked union and nonunion and seen what the return is. I have the ability to retire with dignity and not have to work into my 70s,” says Mazzariello. “I think unions get an incredibly bad rap.” As a business owner, he says his success relies on his ability to go to any job and know that he can draw a skilled, motivated and capable workforce from the union ranks.
At press time, SB 61 was awaiting action by the full house. The state Senate, in February, voted 13-11 to endorse the measure as it has several times in the past. The measure then went before the House Labor, Industrial and Rehabilitative Services committee, which held a public hearing in March. According to a report in the Union Leader, 1,703 signed up against the bill while 222 registered their support for it.
Testifying at the public hearing, Susan Fleck, president of Liberty-NH, which provides natural gas service to 92,000 residents and businesses, and electric service to 44,000 customers, says SB 61 runs contrary to NH’s “Live Free or Die” principles by inserting state government into private business affairs.
“Like many utilities, Liberty has chosen to enter into union contracts, which require certain employees to become members of the union. We find that Liberty’s freedom to choose whether or not to agree to any particular provision at the bargaining table is essential to our ability to maintain a highly effective and skilled workforce, and to meet our obligations as a regulated public utility,” says Fleck.
She says Liberty “is proud to have a great, collaborative working relationship” with both the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) and United Steel Workers (USW), and says “SB 61 would place unnecessary harmful pressure on these crucial relationships.”
She says SB 61 would invalidate Liberty’s existing union contracts, forcing Liberty and the IBEW and USW back to the bargaining table and “the cost burden of these unnecessary contract negotiations” would be borne by Liberty’s customers.
While SB 61 would affect a number of utility and construction workers in NH, many union members in the state are in public sector jobs, including the more than 10,000 members of the State Employees’ Union, SEIU Local 1984, who fall under a 2018 decision known as Janus, where the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that union fees in the public sector violate the First Amendment right to free speech, and employees can therefore refuse to pay union dues.
Richard Gulla, president of SEA/SEIU Local 1984, says they actually saw a slight uptick in members following Janus, and while Right to Work would not change much in the near term, he says weakening unions hurts all workers and eventually hurts businesses as individual buying power is reduced.
“I think it’s proven that workers really don’t do well in states that have enacted these laws,” says Gulla. “There are more important issues the legislature should be looking at, such as lower cost energy for citizens and businesses, and affordable housing.”
Gulla says prior to the pandemic there were small restaurants in the Lakes Region that had to close because they couldn’t find workers. “You always hear someone testifying that this will attract people to New Hampshire. But the cost of living for a young person in their 20s to find an apartment and the cost of electricity make it very difficult to get a workforce here who can afford the essentials.”
Mazzariello says the middle class is dying, and the unions are struggling to keep it alive, “The union is the last bastion for the American Dream. I don’t see the ability for the average person to get there otherwise. The norm is the person stuck in a system designed to make one individual absurdly wealthy on the back of other individuals,” he says.
Federal Act May Overrule
Meanwhile, national legislation being considered could make the NH debate moot. The PRO Act would overturn all right to work laws. Already passed by the U.S. House and now before the U.S. Senate, The PRO Act will give unions a significant boost in workplace organizing campaigns and in labor negotiations, says Mark Mix, president for the National Right to Work Committee who spoke during a BIA webinar in March.
He called the PRO Act a power grab and the single most-inclusive labor policy since 1947. “Everything that unions have asked for to expand their power is in this bill,” says Mix. “It is all designed to give union officials more power over workers and more power over employers.”
Among other provisions, the bill would make it an unfair labor practice to require or coerce employees to attend employer meetings designed to discourage union membership and would make it easier for union votes to be conducted electronically.
Mix says the unionization vote at an Amazon facility in Alabama, a Right-to-Work state, shows that the PRO Act is not needed as existing federal law allowed workers to consider a union. (The Amazon workers ultimately voted against unionizing.)
Weakened Unions
Technology continues to reshape the workforce, including the influence of unions. The MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future, launched in spring 2018, is examining how emerging technologies are transforming the nature of human work. In their initial report, presented at an event in Manchester in 2019, the authors conclude that workers have lost their voice. The report states that while there was a period when U.S. labor unions were arguably too strong, during the past four decades the shareholder primacy model has gained intellectual currency and unions have atrophied. Rank and file workers have generally not benefited from rising productivity.
“Research by the Task Force and others recognizes this decline as one of the causes of the failure of wages to rise in tandem with productivity, as they did from the end of World War II through most of the 1970s. Black workers are also overrepresented in labor unions and hence, as with minimum wage, are particularly disadvantaged by the fall in union wage bargaining,” the Task Force states in its November 2020 report.
In that same report, it recommends strengthening federal regulations to protect workers and more vigorously enforcing protections and processes that allow workers to access collective bargaining.
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