This week, Rep. Amanda Price (R-89) introduced House Bill 4630, co-sponsored by Rep. Gary Glenn (R-98). The proposal is to amend Public Act 150 of 1962 which laid-down employer rules for dealing with replacement workers during a labor dispute, commonly known as “scabs.” Price’s amendment would eliminate the portion of the law that requires employers to inform applicants for replacement work that they would be, well…replacement workers.

It’s something you’d think any earnest person would want to know before making their employment decision. After all, who would want to cross a picket line on their first day of work?

If this all sounds familiar, Democracy Tree reported when Price introduced identical legislation back in 2013. That bill passed in the House, was reported favorably out of the Senate Committee on Reforms, Restructuring, and Reinventing in early 2014, but failed on the Senate floor. The current body of lawmakers is even more conservative than the 2013 GOP dominated legislature, giving this retrograde legislation a more favorable consideration the second time around.

The language of both bills is identical. The Senate Fiscal Agency described it this way, back in 2014:

CONTENT The bill would repeal a section of Public Act 150 of 1962 that prohibits employers from recruiting or advertising for employees to replace striking workers, without notifying potential employees that the employment is offered to replace employees involved in a strike. Public Act 150 of 1962 governs solicitations for employment. Section 3a prohibits a person, partnership, agency, firm, or corporation, or its agent, from recruiting, soliciting, or advertising for employees, or referring people to employment, in place of employees involved in a lawful strike or lockout, without adequate notice to the person and in the advertisement, that there is a strike or lockout at the place where employment is offered and the employment offered is in place of employees involved in the strike or lockout. The bill would repeal Section 3a.

Another attack on organized labor — we are not surprised, nor amused.

Amy Kerr Hardin