You have probably heard that Missouri joined 27 other states as a “Right-to-Work” state when Governor Greitens signed SB19 into law on Monday, February 6, 2016. Now you may be wondering what means for you.
The right-to-work law prohibits requiring employees to become a union member or to pay union dues as a condition of employment. The law will take effect to prohibit agreements that include these conditions on August 28, 2017. Once in effect, the law will apply to all agreements renewed, amended, or created. Current union employees must affirmatively revoke any existing agreements about dues in accordance with their CBA or other agreement in order to avoid contractual liability. The right-to-work law excludes federal employers and employees and those covered under the federal Railway Labor Act.
One exception to the law’s applicability has the potential to result in differing impacts on government contractors depending on where they perform their work. Section 7(3) of the enacted Senate Bill provides that the right-to-work law will not apply to “employers and employees on exclusive federal enclaves.”
Federal enclaves refer to certain federal property obtained with the consent of the state wherein the federal property lies. This can include military bases, federal facilities, and other national grounds within a state such as national parks or forests. Federal enclaves exist as a result of a United States Constitutional provision (Art. I, Section 8, Clause 17) but requires a nuanced analysis to identify because of requirements relating to when the federal government obtained the property.
Judge Gorsuch, as part of a Tenth Circuit panel, reviewed the issue of federal enclaves in Allison v. Boeing Laser Technical Services. That case illustrated several important aspects of the federal enclave doctrine such as the inability of state laws that are inconsistent with federal law to operate within an enclave and the relevance of the time that the property became an enclave to whether new state laws continue to apply to the property. If you conduct work on federal sites and have questions about whether the federal enclave exception applies to you, contact a Husch Blackwell labor and employment attorney.
Contractors not performing work on federal enclaves in Missouri should monitor attempts to reverse right-to-work via a referendum vote. Immediately after Governor Greitens signed the bill into law, a union federation (AFL-CIO) submitted a referendum petition with the Missouri Secretary of State’s office about the right-to-work law. This means that if AFL-CIO can compile enough signatures for a referendum, then the people of Missouri will vote in the November 2018 election on whether to keep right-to-work.
For more information on right-to-work legislation, see Husch Blackwell’s blog post Right-To-Work in Missouri – What Does It All Mean?