MONTGOMERY – Labor leaders from Alabama and the nation responded to Gov. Kay Ivey’s announcement of her signing a bill into law during a speech Monday at the Huntsville/Madison County Chamber Alabama Update luncheon.
They don’t like the bill, sponsored by State Sen. Arthur Orr (R-Decatur) and State Rep. Scott Stadthagen (R-Hartselle), which went into effect on the same day a week-long United Auto Workers union vote began at Tuscaloosa’s Mercedes-Benz plant.
“To further protect our Alabama jobs,” Ivey told the sellout crowd at the Von Braun Center. “I was proud to sign Senate Bill 231 into law.”
In a news release, the Alabama AFL-CIO condemned the bill as an ”attack on business owner freedoms and workers rights.”
SB231 will remove economic incentives from businesses that voluntarily recognize a labor union in an effort to encourage secret union balloting, according to the news release.
“Let’s be clear about something: Senate Bill 231 is an imported bill from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) — an out-of-state special interest group that meets with bought-and-paid-for state lawmakers behind closed doors to push their agenda,” said Alabama AFL-CIO President Bren Riley. “It’s funny to me that Governor Ivey and the sponsors of this bill try to paint unions as the outsiders when elected officials are wasting time and taxpayer money passing these cookie-cutter bills that none of their constituents want.
“Instead of using this legislative session to help families who are sick and can’t see a doctor because they don’t have any health insurance or funding programs to feed little kids who don’t have a stable source of food once the school year ends, these politicians are choosing to spend time to slowly chip away at working peoples’ freedom to form unions. They should be ashamed.”
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