Tennessee voters will next year choose whether to amend the state constitution and add to the document a so-called right to work provision that has been law for more than 70 years.
The state House on Thursday voted by the required two-thirds majority to send the proposal to voters, following the Senate’s approval earlier this year and an earlier affirmative vote in the previous session. In the House, the measure garnered 67 votes, two votes more than required to send it to the ballot. The proposed amendment will be on the November 2022 ballot alongside the race for governor and other state positions.
Tennessee lawmakers first established right-to-work provisions in the 1940s. Under the law, workers can opt out of unions and their dues even if they benefit from collective bargaining or other union advocacy.
The benefit of adding it to the constitution after it’s been established law for seven decades, pro-business and Republican supporters of the push say, is to make it harder to undo should the legislature change hands, as well as potentially put the state in a stronger legal standing should federal legislation preempt right-to-work laws nationwide.
“If it had anything to do with taking down unions, I would not be standing here,” said Rep. Chris Todd, the Republican House sponsor.
But Democrats and pro-union advocates argue the push to add right-to-work to the constitution is the latest move in a long line of anti-labor efforts in Tennessee. That trend has included stripping teachers unions of collective bargaining powers and government pressure during union drives at auto plants.
“When labor was at its strongest, the middle class was at its strongest,” Rep. Darren Jernigan (D-Nashville) said. “We’ve dismantled the middle class. Labor unions are not boogeymen. They’re there for the working class.”
