A bill filed last week in the Alabama Senate would keep companies receiving state economic development incentives from voluntarily recognizing labor unions.

SB 231, sponsored by State Sen. Arthur Orr, R-Decatur, is similar to a bill approved along party lines last week by the Georgia Legislature. The bill would not prohibit secret ballot elections, such as the two that took place at Amazon’s Bessemer fulfillment center in 2021 and 2022.

However, companies under labor law may recognize unions voluntarily if a majority of the workers in a workplace sign union cards. If companies do not recognize a union, a union may file a petition for an election with the National Labor Relations Board or strike for recognition.

The United Auto Workers is currently employing a strategy of getting 70% of workers at auto plants to sign cards before requesting an election, as it did at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga.

Under SB 231, companies are also prohibited from disclosing an employee’s personal contact information to a labor organization, or a third party acting on behalf of a union, without the employee’s prior written consent, unless otherwise required by state or federal law.

The bill would also affect subcontractors, but would not apply to any agreement between the state and companies prior to Jan. 1, 2025.

Any company violating these provisions would have to repay all economic development incentives “received over the life of the project.“

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Alabama had 156,000 union members, or less than 8% of the total workforce, in 2023. Another 24,000 wage and salary workers who do not belong to a union were represented by a union or covered by an employee association or contract.

Union membership has grown since 2021, when less than 6% of the state’s workers belonged to a union.

The North Alabama Area Labor Council called the bill a “direct attack on the freedoms of working people in Alabama and the rights of business owners in our state to make their own workforce decisions.”

“Voluntary recognition by employers is the fastest avenue for employees to legally organize a union in their workplace,” the council said in a statement. “By removing this avenue, this bill is a direct attack on Alabama’s labor movement and will force costly, unnecessary elections on business owners who want to do right by their employees.

Further, the implication of this bill is that workers are being coerced into unionization – this is obviously not the case, and there are mechanisms by which a worker can force an election where they feel the claim to majority support is illegitimate.”