Skip to main content

One to Keep An Eye On: Amendment 1 (Tennessee)


As with many labor & employment law cases (and bills) being litigated around the country, there are always a few that stand out.  This is one to keep an eye on.


This November, November 8th to be exact, voters in Tennessee will have the opportunity to enshrine the state’s right to work law into the Tennessee Constitution.

Tennessee already has a right to work law in place that allows employees to opt out of joining a union and prohibits union membership as a condition of employment.  Readers might be wondering if there is already a right to work law in place, why bother with an amendment to the Tennessee Constitution?  Well, quite simply, enshrining the right to work law in the state’s Constitution better “insulates” it from being repealed by the State Legislature at a later point (say if Democrats were to muster enough votes to repeal the state’s right to work law.)

By amending the Tennessee Constitution to include the state’s right to work law, proponents of the measure are taking the additional step to ensure it is not so easily repealed down the road.  Will voters in Tennessee approve Amendment 1?  I think it might be close, but if I were to hazard a guess, I think this just might make it across the finish line.


For additional information:  https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/politics/2022/09/26/tennessee-amendment-1-unions-would-add-right-to-work-to-the-constitution/69496569007/


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

NLRB: Discussion Among Employees About Tip Pooling is Protected Concerted Activity

  This Advice Memorandum from the National Labor Relations Board’s Associate General Counsel, Jayme Sophir, addressed whether employees which discussed and complained about tip pooling at work constituted protected concerted activity. In relevant part, an employer in New York operated a chain of steakhouses.  While tip pooling was in place at these steakhouses, some of the employees objected to it on the grounds that it was not transparent and improperly divided tips among the workers.  Employees were told not to complain or talk to each other about the tip pool and were told that doing so would endanger their jobs.  Despite the employer later attempting to provide some clarity as to how the tips were being divided, rancor still existed among some employees.  At one point, the employees were told by a general manager that some employees that had been talking about the tip pool were “cleared out” and the employer would continue to do so. In the Advice Memorandum, it was noted that emplo
Post a Comment
Read more

What I’ve Been Reading This Week

A few years ago, I remember when the “Fight for $15” movement was taking off around the country.  Lo and behold, it appears that a $15/hour minimum wage is not the stopping point, which should be no surprise.  As the below article notes, New York is aggressively moving to ramp up hourly wage rates even higher.  While all the  below articles are worth a read, I called particular attention to that one. As always, below are a couple article that caught my eye this week. Disney World Workers Reject Latest Contract Offer Late last week, it was announced that workers at Disney World had rejected the most recent contract offer from the company, calling on their employer to do better.  As Brooks Barnes at The New York Times writes, the unions that represent about 32,000 workers at Disney World reported their members resoundingly rejected the 5 year contract offer which would have seen workers receive a 10% raise and retroactive increased back pay.  While Disney’s offer would have increased pa
Post a Comment
Read more

Utah Non-Compete Bill Falters in House

Last month, a non-compete bill sponsored by Representative Brian Greene (Republican from Pleasant Grove) & up for vote in the Utah House failed to make it through the Legislature.  The bill sought to ban enforcement of non-competes if they came after a worker was already employed, given no compensation (such as a bonus or promotion) for signing the non-compete, and laid off within six months.  However, by a 22 - 49 vote, the bill was resoundingly defeated after some business groups lobbied to kill the non-compete bill.  One group in particular, The Free Enterprise Utah coalition, argued that the Utah State Legislature should hold off on any changes to non compete laws in the state until a survey about non competes was done among Utah businesses.  Representative Greene had countered this claim and argued that a survey was not needed to show that the current non compete laws in the states allowed many businesses, including some small high tech companies in the state, to per
Post a Comment
Read more