Should the ‘right to work’ be part of NC’s constitution? Voters may get to decide
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- North Carolina Senate pushed to get a right-to-work amendment on the ballot.
- The amendment forbids denying the right to work due to union membership status.
- The bill passed third reading 30-16 and now goes from the Senate to the House.
North Carolina voters in November could get to decide whether limiting labor unions to minimal power, which has been codified in state law for nearly 80 years, should be enshrined in the state’s Constitution.
The state Senate on Wednesday advanced a bill that would put a constitutional amendment on the ballot, allowing voters to choose if the amendment passes. The bill now moves to the House.
The amendment states that “the right to work must be protected and maintained free from undue restraints and coercion,” and that right “shall not be denied or abridged on account of membership or nonmembership in any labor union or labor organization or association.”
The amendment is one of a few that could be put to the will of North Carolinians in November. A separate constitutional amendment known as the “right to farm,” which would enshrine the right to cultivate crops and livestock, could be put to voters this year as well.
Democratic lawmakers have criticized the amendments because these same rights are also state law. Republican lawmakers have defended the decision and said the goal is to further protect the rights by placing them in the state’s constitution.
The Republican push for putting the amendments on the ballot has some wondering if it’s an attempt to get more GOP voters to the polls in November.
Senate leader Phil Berger told reporters on Tuesday that the party is hoping to appeal to the citizens of North Carolina.
He said he didn’t know whether the amendments were attempts to get out the Republican vote, “but obviously if it’s something that’s popular with the people and it brings more people out to vote, I think everybody ought to be in favor.”
Right to Work Act
Sen. Steve Jarvis, a Lexington Republican and one of the primary sponsors for the bill, said in a committee meeting on Monday that his father was mandated to be part of a union in another state.
If the union went on strike, Jarvis said, his father could not work and did not get paid, which “hurt financially.”
“There were many of them that would have went to work every day, but they were forced to be out for several weeks at a time,” he said, “I think this is the right thing to do, and we need it in the Constitution so that we can see to it that North Carolina continues to be number one to do business in and to bring business.”
During deliberations in the Senate on Wednesday, Sen. Lisa Grafstein, a Raleigh Democrat, said the anecdotes that she’s heard this past week have “largely been for decades past.”
She said unions help “hardworking people to have a level playing field when it comes to negotiations and benefits.”
Grafstein tried to change the bill by striking two words — “for nonmembership” — from the section governing treating people equally whether they are union or nonunion members.
She said the constitutional amendment would then be “strictly and directly geared at protecting union membership, taking away the barriers to union membership that have made it very difficult to unionize in North Carolina.”
Sen. Jonah Garson put a change forward that would include in the right to work a guarantee that wages will increase with the cost of living.
Garson, a Chapel Hill Democrat, said that language would ensure that “a right to work must mean, if anything, a right for every North Carolinian to earn a wage they can live on for their labor.”
Both changes proposed by Democrats were set aside by votes of 30-16. Four other changes, all proposed by Democrats, were set aside.
