Delaware Legislature passes bill to kill right-to-work in Sussex County

Scott Goss | The News Journal

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Democratic lawmakers this week quashed the burgeoning Sussex County right-to-work movement and invalidated a Seaford ordinance that limits the influence of labor unions.

The Delaware House on Thursday voted along party lines to pass a bill that guarantees the right of private employers to enter into labor deals that require their employees to join or pay fees to a union.

The bill, approved by a vote of 25-13, effectively blocks what had been an effort to create a patchwork of individual counties, towns and other geographic zones where "union shops" would be forbidden.

"This is a good day for labor," said James Maravelias, president of the Delaware AFL-CIO. "We don't need counties and towns interfering with collective bargaining or the relationship between workers and their employer."

The measure passed the Senate in May and now heads to Gov. John Carney, who plans to sign the bill.

"The Governor strongly believes that one of the best ways to stand up for Delaware's workers is to protect their right to organize, earn a good living and support their families," Carney spokesman Jon Starkey said.

Carney has repeatedly said he opposes laws that would make it illegal to block attempts to force workers to join or pay fees to unions as a condition of employment.

Republicans in Sussex County made a strong push to enact exactly those kinds of laws last year, although only Seaford was successful.

Mayor David Genshaw said the local rule was an attempt to bolster economic development in the western Sussex County town that has never recovered from the 2003 sale of a former DuPont Co. nylon plant to Invista, a company owned by Koch Industries.

The plant, which once provided high-paying jobs to nearly 5,000 workers, today employs about 100. Town officials had hoped their right-to-work law would help attract new manufacturers who want the freedom of not having to deal with union labor.

Genshaw called the General Assembly's vote on the bill "shameful."

"Government is not supposed to work this way," he said. "We passed our ordinance legally, ethically, publicly and unanimously ... I'm not sure why legislators who say they are trying to bring jobs to our state would try to limit us from doing the same thing."

County Councilman Rob Arlett, who is now running for U.S. Senate, introduced an ordinance in October that would allow workers in Delaware's southernmost county to decide for themselves if they want to join a union.

That effort was opposed by a political action committee called First State Strong that received more than $300,000 dollars in contributions from Carney, Democratic legislators and some of the state's largest unions.

The Delaware Attorney General's Office and the county's own attorney ruled the proposals would have violated state law. They argued the Legislature alone has the power to enact rules governing relationships between employers and labor unions.

Undeterred, Arlett pushed his ordinance to a vote but was the only one of Sussex's five Republican councilmen to support the measure.

"This bill only validates that the ordinance I put forward was lawful and legitimate because otherwise, why would they pass it?" Arlett said Friday. "My question is, why do legislators in Dover continue to seek methods to diminish economic opportunities in this state?"

The Delaware AG's office was never asked to rule on Seaford's right-to-work law. But the General Assembly's vote this week rendered the ordinance null and void, according to the bill's chief sponsor state Sen. John "Jack" Walsh, D-Stanton.

"That was not the full intent of the bill," said Walsh, a 34-year member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

"The goal is to prevent all municipalities from interfering in the collective bargaining process," he said. "Workers can still decide whether they want to unionize or not but this prevents municipalities from creating situations where workers can get all the benefits of being in a union without paying their fair share."

The bill also preempts recent efforts by Republican legislators to create right-to-work zones in Delaware. Legislation to create those "enterprise zones" failed to get out of committee both this year and in 2015.

The push for right-to-work here comes years after the state's manufacturing sector was decimated by layoffs and plant closures. Delaware has lost 17,000 manufacturing jobs since 1990 while union membership remains historically low, both here and nationally.

Union influence in state politics remains strong, however.

A number of Democrats in the Legislature are union members, while state employees — who make up the largest workforce in Delaware — are largely unionized.

The General Assembly, for instance, recently approved a long-term lease deal for the Port of Wilmington, thanks in part to Gulftainer's promise to require that employees join the longshoreman's union.

Walsh's bill does not impact public employee unions. Six of Sussex County's eight school districts will still be allowed to charge union-negotiated "agency fees" in lieu of union dues, although a pending Supreme Court decision could change that.

While Delaware Democrats continue to battle right-to-work laws, other states that were once union strongholds have adopted them in recent decades. West Virginia last year joined Michigan, Wisconsin and 25 other states that have adopted such laws.

The question of whether those rules are directly responsible for creating more jobs is the subject of intense debate.

Genshaw said Seaford has not landed any new employers directly tied to the right-to-work ordinance it adopted in December. But that does not mean the short-lived experiment was unsuccessful, he said.

"It's just another factor that companies consider when they're thinking about moving, along with financial incentives, infrastructure and schools," he said.

"And to that extent, it has gotten us to the table to have conversations that we otherwise probably never would have been a part of," Genshaw said. "That's why what the Legislature did is so negative, in my opinion."

Contact reporter Scott Goss at (302) 324-2281, sgoss@delawareonline.com or on Twitter @ScottGossDel.

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