Give corporations the right to vote?

 If Peoria ever persuaded state lawmakers to pass a law like Delaware’s House just approved, employers including Caterpillar, Ameren Energy Resources LLC, and RLI could VOTE in municipal elections.

On June 30, Delaware’s House of Representatives in a 35-6 vote passed a bill authorizing a town in the southern part of the state to let the artificial entities businesses use, like corporations, to cast ballots.

If Delaware’s Senate also approves the bill and Gov. John Carney signs it, the measure would allow Seaford – a town of about 8,500 people – to change its charter to enfranchise non-resident businesses. That would mean that corporations, LLCs, partnerships, trusts and other such artificial entities registered in Delaware would have the same voting rights as citizens.

Instead of the democratic principle of “one person, one vote,” the bill codifies the principle of “one person/entity/one vote,” as the bill’s text reads.

A business owner living there wouldn’t be allowed to vote in a local election more than once, as a person and also as a business. However, business owners living elsewhere could vote, which means such entities COULD vote multiple times: where the owners live, and in Seaford or ANY PLACE with a similar law where their business is located.

Advocates for democracy and voting rights understandably denounced the bill, saying that it erodes the nation’s civic values and projects a dangerous message that artificial constructs should enjoy the same rights as human beings.

“This legislation has the power to transform our elections for the worse,” said Claire Snyder-Hall, executive director of the watchdog group Common Cause Delaware. “With Delaware’s lenient incorporation regulations, this legislation could give LLCs, trusts, and outsiders the power to dominate Seaford’s elections.

“Artificial entities should not have voting rights.”

Indeed, common sense tells us that corporations aren’t people. Corporations don’t comfort neighbors, stay up with sick kids, help a friend move and countless other everyday human traits. But lawmakers and judges have been swayed to treat corporations as human beings.

“In a state with more registered businesses than residents, this bill gives wealthy outsiders the power to override the actual people of Seaford,” Snyder-Hall said.

More than 65% of all Fortune 500 companies and more than half of all U.S. publicly-traded companies are incorporated in the state of Delaware, according to Harvard Business Services (HBS) – some 1.6 companies, including Alphabet (Google), Amazon, American Express, Comcast (NBC), CVS, Disney, Tesla and Walmart – plus the aforementioned Peoria employers.

They do so for several reasons. First, there are tax advantages.

“There is no state income tax for Delaware corporations that conduct business out of state,” HBS says, “no inheritance tax on stock held by non-Delaware residents, no state sales tax on intangible personal property (such as royalty payments), and shares of stock owned by non-resident aliens are not subject to Delaware taxes.”

Next, there’s less transparency; companies can register there without identifying their owners. Finally, Delaware has a special Court of Chancery that handles business disputes, with juries replaced by judges who specialize in such case law. That means “decreased liability and litigation judges,” HBS says.

The Seaford proposal is reminiscent of the eligibility to vote in the United States in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, when only white men who owned land could cast ballots.

More recently, the U.S. Supreme Court’s in 2010 decided by a 5-4 vote in “Citizens United v. FEC” to grant corporations the same right to free speech as individuals.

Such rulings and ordinances further blur the line between real human beings and abstract business structures –corporations already shield stockholders from many consequences. And their obligation – their fiduciary responsibility – is to mindlessly maximize profit to deliver to shareholders.

Where human beings ideally treat each other as they’d like to be treated, corporations compete above all.

“This is another step down the road to corporate tyranny,” Snyder-Hall said.

The New Testament says there’s no greater love than to lay down one's life for others, but corporations can’t be bothered to even accept slightly smaller profits to help the environment or pay workers better.

Some people are reasonably concerned about Artificial Intelligence. But for those who value democracy on any level, another artificial threat exists, and it’s less intelligent than mindless.

Illinois’ Workers Rights Amendment 8 months later

After considerable time and treasure were spent last summer and fall to successfully campaign to amend the state’s constitution with “Amendment 1” – the Workers Rights Amendment – it’s not unreasonable to wonder whether the effort was worth it.

Eight months since 21 million voters cast ballots in favor of the amendment, the effect of its passage and the extent to which it’s valuable is unclear.

About 58% of ballots on Nov. 8 supported the addition of Illinois workers’ rights to organize and bargain collectively about wages, hours and working conditions, and also “to protect their economic welfare and safety at work,” to prohibit any law forbidding labor agreements to require represented workers to share in the costs of representations (“Right To Work” laws), and possibly to change the U.S. Supreme Court ruling [in “Janus”] that public employees need not share in their unions’ costs for bargaining and enforcing contracts benefiting the.

Up to $16 million in campaign contributions may have been spent on the campaign, but it’s difficult to account for all the opposition dollars because a lot of money was spent on communications through 501(c)4 tax-exempt “social welfare” nonprofits, which can lobby for political issues, unlike traditional charities organized as 501(c)3’s, and can donate millions of dollars with little transparency.

Nevertheless, “$16 million is a small price to pay to ensure workers now have the fundamental right to collectively bargain and to ensure Illinois will never be a Right-To-Work state,” said Marc Poulos, Executive Director of the Indiana, Illinois and Iowa Foundation for Fair Contracting, and a member of Operating Engineers Local 150 who was active in the campaign to pass the WRA.

“Helping to cement Illinois’ pro-worker policy for current and future generations of workers is priceless,” he continued. “This was probably one of the most important victories for workers Illinois has ever seen.”

Thus far, it’s hard to say whether the WRA has made a difference is discouraging union-busting by employers or encouraging better labor relations with groups of workers.

“The full value is still yet to be seen,” Poulos said. “There are still a lot of discussions regarding how this will be implemented. Certainly, public-sector union members will see a great benefit in that the government cannot diminish, negate, or interfere with various subjects of bargaining. I’m not sure how many laws were introduced this session that would have arguably diminished, negated, or interfered with collective bargaining rights, but it is something that should be on every public-sector union’s radar. It very well may have helped curb certain anti-worker legislation.”

If there’s no explicit use of the WRA yet, it may be because it’s still new – and untested.

“There is still a lot of discussion as to whether the amendment is self-enabling or whether we need further legislation to help create a framework under which the amendment can operate,” Poulos told the Labor Paper. “Another piece of it is litigation – case law that helps interpret laws is borne out of litigation, a costly route.”

Indeed, some law firms say there could be opposition lawsuits seeking to neutralize the constitutional amendment. One anti-WRA argument is that it preempts the National Labor Relations Act, which in 1959 the U.S. Supreme Court decided preempts state and local laws. However, the Supreme Court in its recent “Glacier v. Teamsters” decision, ruled 8-1 to defer to Washington state courts a labor dispute under investigation by the National Labor Relations Board.

The WRA is in play in other ways, Poulos said.

“Think about workers like House Speaker Chris Welch’s staff, who are explicitly excluded from the Illinois Public Labor Relations Act [and] would otherwise have no authority under state statute to organize,” he said. “However, encouraged by the passage of the WRA, they have asked for voluntary recognition. Clearly, the WRA has emboldened workers to collectively bargain who would otherwise not have been able to prior to the passage.

“Another value that has emerged is that other states – California and Pennsylvania, for example – have taken notice of what we did in Illinois and are trying to emulate the Workers Rights Amendment in their states.

“There are options by which a worker can use their new constitutional rights,” Poulos added. “They can exercise them in a court of law, especially as a fundamental right. I have not had discussions with either the state Department of Labor or Attorney General Raoul's Workplace Rights Division to know what their plan is to help enforce the new amendment for the workers of Illinois. But certainly, workers can discuss such rights with the AG or Department of Labor.”

After contentious bargaining, Peoria library workers OK tentative settlement

 Peoria’s Local 3464 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) on July 10 voted 41-6 to accept a Tentative Agreement with the Peoria Public Library.

If ratified by the Library’s Board of Trustees, the pact would be a two-year contract expiring Dec. 31, 2025. No other terms were disclosed as of press time.

The proposed settlement came June 29, but a membership vote was delayed due to scheduling difficulties around the July 4 holiday. Almost all eligible workers cast ballots.

AFSCME, which represents some 60 library workers, started bargaining Nov. 29 before the previous contract expired (Dec. 31, 2022). From the beginning of negotiations, the main issues have been increased workloads after staff reductions and pay.

Negotiators had pointed out that Peoria library workers aren’t paid wages comparable to librarians in other area towns, such as Bloomington and Champaign.

“Our staff cannot afford to eat more than one meal a day,” library worker Rose Farrell told the Peoria City Council last month after days of failed mediation. “Our staff are on government assistance. Our staff are housing insecure, and our staff cannot afford to work here.”

A survey of Peoria Library workers showed that more than 44% feel insecure about their housing and about 90% live “paycheck to paycheck.”

Local President Anthony Walraven commented, “We have a large number of our members that are making minimum wage, or close to minimum wage – and a lot of them have post-secondary education.”

Katy Bauml, Local 3464 Vice President and a member of its bargaining team, said the agreement is disappointing but a starting point for the future.

“It's not what we wanted and it's not what we think we deserve, but it's the first step to working toward where we need to be for our members,” she told the Labor Paper.

“Our work for a better and fair contract in 2026 begins today,” she added. “We are going to continue attending Board meetings and City Council meetings. We won't stop until the budget at the library is no longer flat, and our wages are a livable wage for all employees.”

Peoria City Manager Patrick Urich in March told WCBU public radio, “The labor dispute is something that's between the Library Board of Trustees and the AFSCME union,” adding that the library's annual budget, mostly funded from property taxes, is about $7 million, which includes paying for past system expansion and renovations.

In a prepared statement, Library Executive Director Randall Yelverton said, “The library and its employees, like many businesses, entities and individuals, have felt the strain of inflation and the rising cost of living.”

Bauml said funding and adequate pay remain an issue.

“Library administration and our Board of Trustees have two years to ask for more money and budget for our wages in the next contract,” said Bauml, who praised all of the public support the union received.

 “We want to thank all of you for your time, effort and support throughout all of this,” she said. “We would not be where we currently are without all of your efforts. It is truly appreciated, and we hope we can one day share with you how much it means to us.”

Workers could have a legal tactic against lying employers

It’s now some six weeks since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in “Glacier Northwest v. the Teamsters” that employers can bypass the National Labor Relations Board and sue workers’ unions for damage as a result of a strike – in state court.

But workers may have a new way to resist companies that misrepresent organized labor and possible outcomes of workers organizing an employer.

Lies could have legal – and financial – consequences.

In “Glacier,” the Court on June 1 voted 8-1 (with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson the only dissent) that Glacier, a Vancouver, Wash., concrete company, could sue for damages they allege were intentionally caused when workers let the company load concrete onto their trucks, and then went on strike, leaving management unable to deliver the product and causing the employer to discard the concrete.

The company sued the Teamsters in Washington state court for destruction of property, but that state’s supreme court dismissed the case because the issue was appropriately considered by the NLRB – which was already investigating the incident and supported issuing a complaint that Glacier had sued in retaliation for the work stoppage.

But the U.S. Supreme Court, in an opinion written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett accepted the company’s assertion that the Teamsters hadn’t taken reasonable precautions to protect Glacier’s property, comparing the concrete to perishable goods such as milk or poultry. Jackson’s dissent was blunt, noting that precedent establishing the NLRB as the exclusive agency for such disputes “makes clear that we have no business delving into this particular labor dispute.

“Workers are not indentured servants,” she continued, “bound to continue laboring until any planned work stoppage would be as painless as possible for their master.”

Still, the ruling seemed to be another action to weaken the already-weak federal labor law.

However, labor lawyers and other advocates are now holding up a lawsuit against a California grocery chain as a way to use existing law to fight union-busting companies, if not strikes specifically.

In a mostly overlooked ruling from April, the California-based Save Mart Supermarkets asked U.S. District Judge William Orrick to dismiss a lawsuit accusing Save Mart of lying about retirement benefits to stop workers from organizing.

Orrick dismissed the motion and said the class-action lawsuit can proceed.

Save Mart – the country’s 109^th-largest private employer, according to Forbes, with about $5 billion in annual revenue – has hundreds of grocery stores in California and Nevada under different retail names, with more than 14,000 workers. Local chapters of the United Food and commercial Workers represent about 11,500 Save Mart workers.

As reported by the online news service Truthout, workers’ suit centers on promises made by managers about retirement benefits to undercut the appeal of union membership to workers, a common anti-union scheme in organizing campaigns. A Save Mart loss in the case could alarm companies using similar tactics.

 

“Unions need to address large companies’ anti-union tactics any way they can, especially given how weak our labor laws have become,” said Naomi Soldon, partner of the union-side labor law firm Soldon McCoy, which isn’t representing anyone in the dispute. Soldon told Truthout that the case takes a “novel approach” to fighting union-busters, and a decision in favor of the workers “should help organizing drives, in general, as it shows employees that they have rights.”

 

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on allegations of “two misrepresentations” by the company: promises of nonunion retirement benefits “as good or better than those of their union counterparts,” and managers telling workers to retire earlier than they should have to in order to maximize benefits and income.

 

The misrepresentation were part of Save Mart’s strategy to undermine union organizers, plaintiffs’ lawyers said.

 

For years, Save Mart had provided similar retirement benefits to nonunion workers. But the terms of benefits to union workers were binding, as per the collective bargaining agreement governing them, while nonunion retirees were compensated at the discretion of management. So last year, after Save Mart was bought by private-equity firm Kingswood Capital Management, management took benefits away from nonunion retirees. And four employees who’d worked for Save Mart for a total of 146 years filed the class-action suit.

 

“Put simply, Save Mart made false assurances about benefits as a means of suppressing union enrollment among Save Mart employees,” plaintiffs’ attorneys claimed, estimating that their clients represent a class that could consist of thousands of workers who are owed “hundreds of millions of dollars.”

 

Human Resource representatives and company executive were trained to communicate that employees should not pay dues to join the union, since non-union benefits — including retirement benefits — would always be as good as or better than the benefits enjoyed by union employees, the lawsuit says. Such meetings were held at stores where management realized workers were organizing.

 

Union employees didn’t have to consider the possibility of losing their benefits because they had contracts, according to UFCW Local 8-Golden State.

 

“Our members can rest assured they have the benefit of solid successor language which guarantees they will continue to enjoy the benefits of their union memberships and labor contracts,” the union said in a prepared statement.

 

The complaint features testimony by HR executives who for years delivered such messages without realizing they were deceptive until the Kingswood-controlled company started reneging on promises and eliminating benefits.

 

Eric Fink, associate professor of Elon University School of Law in North Carolina, said there’s a high threshold under the National Labor Relations Act for securing charges against union-busting managers who make deceptive claims about benefits, and the remedies are weak.

 

“Even if the bait-and-switch in this case could be the basis for an Unfair Labor Practice charge, it would require proof that the employer was motivated by anti-union animus, which would be difficult,” Fink said.

“More significantly, in contrast to the limited remedies available [there], the potential remedies in an ERISA [Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974] suit are substantial,” he continued. “If this suit is successful, and if other employers anticipate the possibility of facing similar suits, the deterrent effect could be much greater than has been the case with [Unfair Labor Practice] charges.”