On February 28, 2012, members of the Georgia Senate’s Insurance and Labor Committee passed SB 469, an anti-free speech bill designed to eliminate and/or criminalize the voice of Georgians, out of committee.
Despite hearing testimony from a number of citizens, organizations and associations--including GAE, Communication Workers of America, as well as the AFL-CIO–the committee voted and passed the bill anyway. It was done via voice vote. There were no nays, nor abstentions.
By doing so, those Georgia State Senators took a nasty swipe at public educators, police officers, firemen, nurses, mechanics, and countless others—all hard working professionals who believe that joining together to effect change and protect their rights is a good thing.
Senator Don Balfour, the primary sponsor of SB 469, commented as he introduced SB 469 to the committee that this legislation came directly from the Chamber of Commerce and that similar legislation has been proposed in other states.
The Senate Committee will tell you that SB 469 is a bill to prohibit mass picketing at private residences. As Senator Don Balfour (lead sponsor of the bill) put it, the language of the bill is "content neutral." Perhaps we haven't been reading the same bill, Senator Balfour. You see, SB 469 will criminialize picketing, punish employee associations, and penalize civil disobedience We consider this a direct attack.
GAE, AFL-CIO, Communications Workers of America, and other organizations-t work diligently to support and represent public educators and other hard working Georgians. SB 469 undermines our capability to provide those services and protections to you. In GAE's case, one of those primary resources is legal protection for educators.
We believe the state has NO AUTHORITY to interfere with your PRIVATE CHOICE to have a preset amount automatically deducted from your paycheck. Stand united with us to protect your right to organize! lessHere is also the link for the petition: http://www.thepetiti...om/1/StopSB469/
The bill states clearly that it will prohibit all pickets in any place.
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BE IT ENACTED BY THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF GEORGIA:
SECTION 1.
Chapter 6 of Title 34 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, relating to labor organizations and labor relations, is amended by revising Code Section 34-6-5, relating to interference with public ways of travel, transportation, or conveyance by mass picketing near site of a labor dispute, as follows:
"34-6-5.
(a) It shall be unlawful for any person to engage in mass picketing at or near any place, including private residences, where a labor dispute exists in such number or manner as to obstruct or interfere with or constitute a threat to obstruct or interfere with the entrance to or egress from any place of employment or the free and uninterrupted use of public roads, streets, highways, railroads, airports, or other ways of travel, transportation, or conveyance.
I know it sounds like this has something to do with private residences but it really doesn't ...
The proposal states clearly :
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It shall be unlawful for any person to engage in mass picketing at or near any place (snip) where a labor dispute exists in such number or manner as to obstruct or interfere with or constitute a threat to obstruct or interfere with the entrance to or egress from any place of employment or the free and uninterrupted use of public roads, streets, highways, railroads, airports, or other ways of travel, transportation, or conveyance.
The addition of the phrase 'including private residences' is smoke. Any place means any place and that any place might include private residents, corporate headquarters, businesses, baseball stadiums, football stadiums, airports ... hell anyplace would include porta-potties and the State Capital for that matter.
This proposed bill includes ANY PLACE ... and the addition of private residences in the text is slight of hand to put that image in your mind - you know the old don't think of a pink elephant trick.
The rest of the language of the proposed law does go further literally directing superior court judges to ignore other factors such as the first amendment rights or even federal labor law and grant injunctions against the picketing ... as well as hit those picketing with the (no doubt inflated) legal fees of the company, business or government being picketed. Simply the act of picketing in any place is tacit violation of this law.
[quote]A court having jurisdiction of an action brought under this subsection shall grant injunctive relief if the court finds that any person, union, or organization has engaged or is engaging in any of the conduct prohibited under subsection (a) of this Code section, without regard to the existence of other remedies, demonstration of irreparable harm, or other factors. The court shall award court costs and reasonable attorney fees to a plaintiff who prevails in an action brought under this subsection.{/quote]
So isn't this 'against the law?' ... i.e. in violation of federal labor laws?
Sure it is. But it is the type of thing that remains actionable by and within the state until the law is adjudicated.
The way the law works is that it will be enforced first. Fines levied, legal fees assessed, the extra provisions of the law including rewriting of the labor agreements and frequent requirements of each employee being asked do you still want to be in the union... and requiring businesses to ask them as a matter of law.
And so it takes at least a year and more likely three or four years before an issue of this nature to get to the federal courts and be ruled upon in any kind of definitive way. With the present Supreme Court rewriting precedents, particularly on issues of this nature dear to the GOP agenda, lower courts that may include specific outlier jurists have an opportunity to reverse existing law.
So yes, this is the Georgia Republican effort to crush labor unions. As the current national efforts seem to follow Georgia in areas such as labor law, it is expected the Georgia General Assembly will do more in the area of labor and also civil rights (anti-gay measures, women's issues, etc. (For example, all the brouhaha about forced ultra-sounds for women seeking to terminate pregnancies early ... Georgia passed just that kind of law in 2005 - amended in 2008 - predating what Virginia is trying to pass now.)
So Georgia appears to be a bell weather of the future of conservatism and the acts of the General Assembly demonstrate the direction the GOP wants to take the entire nation on issues ranging from labor law (not even the right to picket) to the dominance of males interests in reproductive rights.
Considering that these kinds of actions are far from the acts of limited government, we can say hello to Big Brother in Georgia first.
I'm far from an anti-union guy but some of these pickets are an absolute joke. We had a construction union picketing in front of our building in ATL for months because the owner was using non-union labor. This protest was nothing more than a bunch of homeless people paid a few bucks to walk around with signs and scream at people led by a single union organizer.
mrnn
"Republicans have been fleeced, exploited, and lied to by the conservative entertainment complex" -- David Frum, Former Bush Speechwriter and directer of Republican Jewish Coalition
Federal Law and The First Amendment will trump any State actions such as this and it will be struckdown in court. It'll go to the Supreme Court for sure. Thank our legislators for kowtowing to lobbing effort from big business...
"There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die."
Religion in Government is like Gang Rape. 5 out of the 6 participants thinks it's great, done by popular concensus and morally justified because the Bible and "god" said they could. Publicly the 5 condem it but have no problems privately supporting it or participating in it...
But, here in Georgia we even passed a law which prohibits a governmental entitiy from utilizing their bottomless checkbook to needlessly litigate against a citizen wishing to seek redress from that government......The Georgia Anti-Slapp Statute.
But nothing stops the Paulding County Board of Commissioners to continue on with needless litigation by APPEALING the local Judge's ruling which found them to be guilty of violating the Georgia AntiSlapp Statute.
And they APPEAL it saying that their spending over $1.2MILLION Dollars to protect a private developer is NOT violating the statute. They even said, in open court, and I quote, "Any citizen wishing to seek redress against government per their 1st Amendment rights should be prepared to spend in excess of $500,000 in order to do so!"
When you think they are ganging up against you....."Illigitimus non es carborundum"
I suppose the thing that bothers me most about this kind of legislation is that it takes what was settled law and reneges on the deal forcing a new fight. I think the decisions that our mothers and fathers made on these and other issues were generally equitable and just. In other words they did, in my opinion, a pretty doggone good job of setting up a cohesive society not only capable of growing, sharing and progressing but of doing some amazing things like putting a man on the moon.
And then I see the children of these folks - the beneficiaries of these wise policies and my contemporaries - throwing all this out on the basis of some half-baked ideology cooked up by a Russian woman who wrote a mediocre novel in the late 1940s and popularized by an anti-union union actor. The society spawned was presumably one based on merit but instead it rewarded unrestrained greed and a society dominated by those with gold.
Sure things change but to me the decisions made by 'the greatest generation' (which sacrificed more for our freedoms than certainly those of us in the pampered baby boom ever did) were based more on the Christian version of the golden rule than the Babylonian version that makes a mockery of that moniker. Indeed it was the wisdom of the former than trumped the latter with its innate sense of justice and that made the United States of America the envy of the world.
What amazed the world and made us the leader wasn't the arrogance or hubris of our leaders in Vietnam or even their willingness to escalate the terror of that conflict even as we sought to extricate ourselves from a dubious foreign adventure. Rather it was the hope and opportunity that anyone from virtually any part of the world could succeed here on our shores and live in a society that valued pragmatism, cooperation and success. That we attained those values through a new and newly won sense of respect - and expanded that respect to include sex and race through the upheaval of civil rights of the 1960s and 1970s - was a miracle on par with the success of Ghandi in freeing India from the British without a war.
Well, the effort to repeal the social and civil rights gains is just another step backwards toward another civil war and it seems so stupid.
34-6-5.
(a) It shall be unlawful for any person to engage in mass picketing at or near any place, including private residences, where a labor dispute exists in such number or manner as to obstruct or interfere with or constitute a threat to obstruct or interfere with the entrance to or egress from any place of employment or the free and uninterrupted use of public roads, streets, highways, railroads, airports, or other ways of travel, transportation, or conveyance.
Two clauses to that law....it is not simply 'unlawful at any place'. The second element that needs to be fulfilled in the code for it to apply is it has to be in such numbers or a manner that it obstructs the entrance to the property of a business or it blocks access to the public roadways or tranportation. Picketing can and should be done without violating any of the above so I do not really see the problem.
People do have the right assemble and picket but private business has the right to access their property and the public has the right to access the roadways and public transportation.
This post has been edited by Ugadawgs98: 06 March 2012 - 08:44 AM
Teachers we need your voice to be heard! Senate bill 469 will be on the floor for a vote tomorrow and it will severely hamper all teacher associations in our state. In a time when we are being pushed to our limits with more furlough days, the possibility of paying more insurance, and pay for performance on the horizon; we need to be able to decide if our yearly dues are taken out of our pay checks. The government should have not say into how I join an association or organization! Not to mention this bill infringes on our 1st Amendment rights. Please do not sit back because and watch this happen; we can no longer sit back and watch.
Two clauses to that law....it is not simply 'unlawful at any place'. The second element that needs to be fulfilled in the code for it to apply is it has to be in such numbers or a manner that it obstructs the entrance to the property of a business or it blocks access to the public roadways or tranportation. Picketing can and should be done without violating any of the above so I do not really see the problem.
People do have the right assemble and picket but private business has the right to access their property and the public has the right to access the roadways and public transportation.
I don't think anyone would be horribly concerned with the idea that if they're blocking the roadway or actually impeding traffic or ingress/egress that they may be subject to arrest but the law makes having an undefined number of folks at a place a violation as this ill defined or undefined number of folks simply need constitute a threat to do so.
Well, as a jury I can see the prosecutor who arrested a one person picket line showing a slide of the sole protestor in Tiananmen Square in Beijing as he held up a column of heavily armored tanks - meaning that one person could constitute such a threat ... and I couldn't disagree.
Hence, the qualification you mentioned as tempering the law may not be a factor in its execution at all.
And while this law would allow for the arrest of the sole protester in Tiananmen Square based on their action, it would also allow for the arrest without the theatrics of blocking the column of tanks ... simply because the individuals presence is a threat to do so.
Indeed massing with the threat to do so constitutes a thought crime. I'm just of the opinion that people ought to commit a crime before they're arrested.
SB 469 passed the Senate and reported favorably from a house committee before resistance was able to put the breaks on this ill-conceived law.
Notably Sen. Bill Heath voted for it. Although he was one of the laws sponsors, Bill Hamrick did not vote and was excused from the vote.
It seems this law, along with the voter suppression legislation and stand your ground laws, is the brainchild of the corporate think tank ALEC. Like the voter suppression laws, its purpose is to limit free speech and punish dissent.
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“In a state which lays credible claim to being the cradle of the Civil Rights Movement, State Senators Don Balfour, Ross Tolleson, Bill Hamrick, and Bill Cowsert have just demonstrated palpable disrespect for Georgia’s rich history of protest and activism. They are the sponsors of Senate Bill 469 which, had it been law in 1960, would have made Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery, John Lewis, Joe Beasley, Minnie Ruffin, and many other luminaries of the Civil Rights Movement into felons,” Sara Amis of Occupy Atlanta, wrote in a blog post.
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