New Orleans       I got kind of excited recently when I stumbled on a proposed amendment to the city charter that memorialize the rights of city workers in New Orleans to unionize and collectively bargain.

There’s a backstory, of course.  Our union had won an election to represent all but a couple of city departments more than twenty years ago during the term of Mayor Marc Morial, now president of the national Urban League.  We successfully bargained and ratified an agreement representing these workers with the city.

The story is all good up to that point.  Then SEIU separated Local 100’s Louisiana members to create a new local that would focus just on the public sector workers that Local 100 had organized in contracts for city workers in Baton Rouge and New Orleans, as well as the school workers we represented in Baton Rouge, Livingston, Jefferson and other parishes.  Katrina hit in 2005; 1500 city workers were laid off.  The new local, SEIU 21, went through a number of leadership changes and was unable to get traction in New Orleans to implement the contract under then Mayor Ray Nagin and the distractions of the recovery work.  One thing led to another and between 2018 and 2000, SEIU relinquished the jurisdiction and what was left of the Local 100 agreements to the local AFSCME district.  According to newspaper accounts, District 17 has had no better luck at representing these workers under Mayor LaToya Cantrell, even failing to get a meeting.

Now with an election coming this November and council members positioning themselves to run for mayor or at-large positions, in March there was a report that they were independently taking action to pressure Mayor Cantrell and to signal their independence from anti-union measures being proposed by the veto-proof Republican majority legislature.  As reported by Verite, an online local news source,

New Orleanians will cast ballots this fall on whether to add a “Workers’ Bill of Rights” to the city charter, following a City Council vote Thursday (March 21). The council voted unanimously to call for an election on a ballot proposal for the measure to add workplace rights to the existing municipal bill of rights. These rights would include access to fair wages, paid leave and health care, as well as the right to organize a workplace union.

As you can imagine, and I’m glad to testify, my heart gladdened to once again see city workers have the protection we won decades ago, but have subsequently been lost in the shuffle of city and union politics.

I was scratching my head, though.  This was great news, but I hadn’t seen any other story along these lines in the regular paper, the New Orleans Times-Picayune Advocate, nor could I find any other mention from news sources online, TV or radio on a search.  Was this still happening, or was it a stealth amendment to the charter hoping to pass under the radar?

Finally, I found the language of the charter amendment going on the ballot, which would supposedly enshrine workers’ rights in the city.  The introduction to the measure is clear that a section is being proposed on workers’ rights for New Orleans citizens, but here’s what it says:

(12)  The people have the right to a safe workplace which complies with all Federal, State, and local workplace laws and regulations including wage and hour laws, as well as the right to organize and to associate freely in pursuit of workplace and economic justice.

The next section immediately says that none of the enumerated items in the city’s Bill of Rights create “enforceable rights, duties, or obligations,” except as allowed by the US and state constitution.

I            n short, if approved, the charter will be amended to include “the right to organize and to associate freely in pursuit of workplace and economic justice.”   The language is just political symbolism, granting nothing more than what workers, whether public employees with the city or private sector workers in New Orleans, already have.  Similarly, the rights to living wages, paid leave, and healthcare are also symbolic and mainly aspirational.

I don’t want to come off cynical.  I’ll vote “yes” to this charter amendment.  I wanted to vote “yes” for change, but that turns out not to be on the ballot at all.  City and other workers didn’t move one step forward.  They just got a wave and an attaboy from City Hall, and the mirage of change.