NY Governor Hochul signs 'union protection' bill into law

(The Center Square) — Labor unions in New York will be allowed to take legal action against groups that discourage union membership under a proposal signed into law by Gov. Kathy Hochul on Wednesday.

The bill, which passed the state Assembly and Senate amid a chaotic end to the legislative session, makes it illegal to "falsely impersonate" a union representative and gives the state Attorney General's office broad powers to investigate, subpoena and fine any person or organization — including out-of-state groups — for communications deemed to be impersonations. The fine is $1,000 per violation.

Backers of the Democratic-sponsored plan say the restrictions are aimed at stopping groups that send "deceptive" mailers to workers, which they claim are often mistaken for official union correspondence.

But the Washington, D.C.-based Freedom Foundation said the legislation is a veiled attack on its work in New York, and part of broader efforts by Democratic-led states to stifle groups that educate workers about their First Amendment right to opt out of union membership.

"Governor Kathy Hochul signed a law whose entire purpose is to silence the Freedom Foundation for telling New York's public employees the truth about their constitutional rights," Freedom Foundation CEO Aaron Withe said Wednesday in a statement. "It's a hit job."

Withe said the public sector unions in New York "are terrified of an inconvenient fact: when public employees learn they don't have to pay union dues, a lot of them stop."

"So instead of making their case to their own members, union bosses ran to their friends in the legislature and got them to write a law that makes speech illegal," he said.

The proposal was based on an Oregon law that the foundation is currently challenging in court. But New York's proposal goes further than Oregon's to give a "private right of action" allowing unions to file lawsuits against out-of-state parties that could result in devastating fines, the group said.

"It won't work," Withe said. "We didn't back down in Oregon, and we're not backing down in New York."

Nearly 7,500 New York public employees — out of approximately 968,000 covered by union contracts — have used Freedom Foundation materials to cancel their membership, including more than 1,400 so far this year, the group said.

Union leaders say the protections are needed to safeguard workers' rights and push back against conservative groups seeking to reduce public sector membership. They say workers who enjoy union benefits, such as legal representation in arbitration hearings, should have to pay something.

Conservative groups say Democrats, and the labor unions that heavily fund their campaigns, are trying to find a way around the 2018 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, which held that government workers cannot be forced to contribute to labor unions to drum up dues.

Organized labor spends millions of dollars lobbying the state government and lawmakers through political action committees, and most of the money goes to Democrats, according to government watchdogs.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board blasted the New York proposal as the 'Union Protection Act' and called on Hochul not to sign it.