(Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Wednesday rejected a farmworker union's challenge to a North Carolina law that significantly limits efforts to organize the state's largely Latino agricultural workforce.
A three-judge 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel said a provision of the 2017 law that bars farms from voluntarily recognizing unions as their workers' bargaining representatives as part of settlements in employment-related litigation does not violate the free-speech rights of unions and workers, reversing a judge who had blocked the measure.
The court affirmed the judge's ruling that upheld a separate provision prohibiting agreements that require employers to deduct union dues from farmworkers' paychecks.
Along with the free-speech and other constitutional claims, the 4th Circuit rejected arguments by the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) that the law was racially discriminatory because it singled out an industry where about 95% of workers statewide are Latino. FLOC is the only farmworker union in North Carolina.
FLOC, which is represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Nor did the office of North Carolina's Democratic Attorney General, Josh Stein, which defended the law.
North Carolina is one of nearly 30 U.S. states with "right to work" laws prohibiting requirements that workers join unions as a condition of employment. Republicans who backed the 2017 law said it would strengthen the existing...
South Africa’s Ambassador to the United States, Roelf Meyer, has rejected claims of a so-called “white genocide”, describing the narrative as false and driven by a small group seeking to influence...