On the 2024 State Legislative Session
As this year’s legislative session comes to a head, members of NOCWOC’s executive board share thoughts on the past few months.
The Louisiana Legislature’s 2024 Regular Session recently ended, bringing to a close a salvo of far-right attacks on Louisiana’s people, brought on by the state’s conservative coalition: corporations, wealthy ruling class, ultraconservative religious groups, and fascist-MAGA supporters that speak through the Louisiana Republican Party. Coming on the heels of Governor Landry’s Special Session to pass “criminal reform” legislation, the Regular Session that started in March 2024 saw at least 27 anti-union bills filed, primarily targeting unemployment benefits and the rights of public sector workers to form unions and collectively bargain. Many other bills targeted our public resources or sought to further oppress minority groups and workers, such as bills aiming to criminalize immigrants, to censor library materials and undermine local library boards (these bills were themselves targeting the rights of LGBTQ+ Louisianians) and to further restrict abortion drug access and trans medical rights.
It is important to soberly analyze the strength and position of the labor movement in Louisiana emerging from this fight. We must ask ourselves: Are we stronger and more united than when we began? What were we able to achieve, politically and ideologically? How did we use the struggle to galvanize our membership AND draw in new movement activists and develop worker-leaders? And perhaps most importantly, how do we best utilize the answers to these questions as we move forward?
Despite the severity of the threats leveled by the far-right during this session, the outcome of the struggle against the Legislature was a surprise to many in the labor movement: of the 27 anti-worker bills that were filed, only 5 passed. The majority of those that did pass dealt with restricting unemployment benefits – while still a bad outcome, it did not deliver the death blow to public sector unionism that was expected. The most noxious bill of these bills, HB 156, repeals required minimum breaks and meal periods for minors at work.
The majority of the anti-union provisions, such as HB 523 and 571 which would restrict or eliminate public sector worker collective bargaining, were killed at the committee level toward the very end of the session. This also includes a proposed constitutional amendment that would have drastically changed the composition of civil service employees at the local and state levels.
What Worked, What Didn’t, and Where Do We Go from Here?
This fight involved both a lobbying strategy at the Capitol, directed by the Louisiana AFL-CIO and their partners with Louisiana Progress, and a popular mobilization strategy led by rank-and-file public workers, allied groups, and labor organizations. While these strategies would appear to complement each other, there was minimal coordination or communication between these segments: the AFL-CIO strategy was restricted to the leadership of the major unions and their lobbyists, leaving out NOCWOC and rank-and-file workers from participating in strategy. The popular mobilization strategy, on the other hand, developed a democratic and participatory model through strategy sessions and a mass meeting in March and April. In order to coordinate the opposition “on the ground” – through protests and marches – NOCWOC and Step Up LA initiated a mass meeting that assembled a coalition of unions and working-class organizations to debate and plan how we would take the fight to the streets. The “Worker Fight Back Coalition” that emerged from this meeting brought together 18 worker organizations, including Freedom Road Socialist Organization, Democratic Socialists of America, New Orleans Workers Center for Racial Justice, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, United Teachers of New Orleans, Fair Trade Musicians, Union Migrante, National Nurses United, Workplace Justice Project, and many others. The Coalition organized a march on April 6 and collaborated with Union Migrante in support of immigrant rights for the May Day March.
The lobbying strategy did deliver some important results, including transporting union workers and supporters to the State Capitol in Baton Rouge to testify against the legislation. A rally in mid-May brought ~100 people to the Capitol, after which the House and Senate Labor Committees rejected several of the anti-union bills. These actions represent important entry points for worker participation in lobbying and activism. However the lack of rank and file participation in the legislative strategy effectively restricted how workers participated in their own struggle. This is particularly acute for New Orleans city government workers, whose union, AFSCME Council 17, has failed to establish regular meetings since November 2023 and neglected to elect officers.
The outcome of the session, where far-right Republicans enjoy a supermajority in both houses and hold the governorship, raise important questions about the effectiveness of both the lobbying and popular mobilization approaches. Lobbying brought opposition to the Capitol, but the Republican sponsors of the anti-union bills were in very little danger of provoking backlashes in their own districts; likewise, while our Coalition marches in downtown New Orleans were important in demonstrating the existence of a broad opposition and the possibilities of unions and the Left working collectively and democratically, these were not demonstrations of the size and depth capable of threatening a significant economic disruption, the only possible non-electoral weapon popular forces can use against the government. With neither lobbying (and with it threat of electoral repercussions) nor demonstrations significant enough to stop the bills, how and why were they defeated? What made the Republicans pull back?
We aren’t able to know why many of the major anti-union bills were withdrawn or defeated, despite Republican majorities, because the labor movement in Louisiana lacks democratic and accountable ways of assessing our campaign strategies. Without democratic leadership at the top of the labor movement, the entire legislative strategy was directed by union officials and contracted lobbyists far removed from workplace struggles. We need a labor movement that mobilizes both at the Capitol and on the streets, that creates multiple routes not only for lobbying but for participation, planning, and activation of worker militants and their allies in the public who want to support workers rights. While we eked by this session, we know that anti-union bills will persist as long as Louisiana workers continue to struggle and win, continue to pass major local legislation like the Right to Organize Ordinance, and as major national unions, like the UAW since the Volkswagen victory in April, shift resources to organizing the South.
Throughout the session we witnessed the mobilization of working-class people and the wider public in Louisiana in similarly high stakes struggles against right wing efforts to marginalize and oppress Black, immigrant, women, and LGBTQ+ people; as well as bills targeting specific public resources like schools and libraries. In most cases, folks involved in one aspect of the resistance to the Republican legislature were involved in another struggle simultaneously. While these forces weren’t coordinated in a formal united front, workers organizing through the Worker Fight Back Coalition combined the pro-union movement with the fights against racism and the criminalization of Black people and immigrants, the fights against censorship, homophobia and transphobia, the fight for women’s rights and abortion access, and the fight for our public resources. Louisiana is home to a diverse, politicized, and oppositional culture that has survived centuries of oppression and domination, generally relying on divide and conquer tactics to privilege white workers against Black people. While we have not overcome the ramifications of this history of racism and division, the emergence of various fronts in the opposition to the far-right and corporate power in the state signals new possibilities that Louisiana’s unions must make common cause with if we expect to grow and mobilize a stronger opposition in the years ahead.
