News & Commentary March 17, 2023

[Omaha Steve]

https://onlabor.org/march-17-2023/

By Greg Volynsky

Greg Volynsky is a student at Harvard Law School.

In today’s News & Commentary, a Texas committee considers sweeping legislation limiting municipal power, University of Chicago graduate students unionize, Tennessee Nissan technicians reject a unionizing effort, and protestors in France take to the streets after President Macron activates nuclear option to raise retirement age.

On Wednesday, a committee in the Texas House considered legislation that would severely limit the ability of municipalities to regulate, including in labor and employment. The law would add a “field preemption” provision to laws governing finance, insurance, natural resource, labor, and occupations. The bill was filed in both the Texas House and Senate in early February. Governor Greg Abbott has come out in support of the bill. The bill’s sponsors frame it as a means of ensuring regulatory consistency and a way to tell cities and towns to “stay in your lane.” For instance, the law would preempt an Austin ordinance requiring construction workers be provided a 10-minute break for every four hours of work.

Following a multi-year organizing effort, graduate students at the University of Chicago overwhelmingly voted to unionize. The University of Chicago joins a wave of new graduate student unions, as I reported in February.

On Thursday, a group of 71 Nissan technicians in Tennessee voted against unionizing. The union first submitted a petition in 2021, but the vote was delayed after the company requested that the union election include thousands more workers. An NLRB panel ordered last month that only the small group of technicians be part of the collective bargaining unit. Before the loss, a union representative said the delay “chilled” the unionizing campaign. Six years ago, Nissan workers in Mississippi also voted against unionizing.

FULL story at link above.