By Ian Ocx, Red Phoenix correspondent, Texas.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott recently signed HB 2127 into law which will take effect September 1, 2023. The publicly stated purpose and goal for this bill, which held broad Republican Party support, is to create a statewide regulatory system in relation to business practices and commerce regulations, which would ban local city and county governments in Texas from setting up their own regulations on local commerce practices. The Texas Regulatory Consistency Act undoubtedly represents yet another attack on workers’ rights and union power in Texas as the bill’s intent is to do away with any local governmental regulations that labor has won over the years and conform them with the more reactionary and anti-worker state code in Texas.

The bill itself states that, “(2) in recent years, several local jurisdictions have sought to establish their own regulations of commerce that are different than the state’s regulations; and (3) the local regulations have led to a patchwork of regulations across this state that provide inconsistency.”

It also claims, “The purpose of this Act is to provide regulatory consistency across this state and return the historic exclusive regulatory powers to the state where those powers belong.”

When the law was still being debated amongst the Texas legislature, before its passage and signing into law, the Texas AFL-CIO released a warning: 

“This bill would not just take away our ability to determine how the places we live and work are governed, it would end life saving rest breaks for construction workers, among many other essential worker protections. This is not just an attack on workers, it’s an attack on ALL Texans, and we cannot let it get any further.” 

One of the largest concerns for the working class in Texas is that this new law grants the state the ability to eliminate mandated water breaks which alleviate them from the intense heat during Texas summers — a right that construction workers in Austin have already won with the passage of the Rest Break Ordinance in 2010. The new law would strip away existing protections and also prevent other cities or counties from enacting similar ordinances for workers’ safety and labor rights, such as the wage theft protection ordinances in Houston and El Paso.

Just days after Gov. Abbott signed HB 2127 into law, a 35-year old electrical lineman from West Virginia who was working in Texas on the state’s worrisome power grid died from “heat-related causes,” and a Dallas area postal worker, Eugene Gates Jr., died due to excessive heat while on his mail route. Sadly, instances like these may become all too frequent within Texas in the coming months, especially for all outdoor workers. Fields like construction and agriculture, which are made up of predominantly Latino workers, will face completely unsafe working and health conditions once HB 2127 goes into full effect. This is important to note because Texas already holds the record for the highest Latino worker death rates in the entire US. So not only will HB 2127 increase health hazards for all workers, but it will undoubtedly exacerbate the unsafe working conditions already experienced by many Latino workers. 

Texas, which is a “right-to-work” state, already has an extremely low union membership rate with only 4.1% of Texas workers belonging to a labor union. This abysmal standing of workers’ organizational power in Texas is not enough for the capitalists, who continue to beat down any semblance of humanity and democratic rights that the working class in Texas experiences, including stripping Texas workers of their right to water breaks.

While the immediate aim of the struggle for labor rights in Texas must be to overturn reactionary anti-worker legislation like HB 2127, it needs to be stated that workers in Texas will not find their total liberation from dehumanization and exploitation in the same system that stripped them of their democratic rights, especially their right to drink water. Freedom from exploitation will come through organized strength and the ability to create a society where workers are treated with human dignity.

June 29, 2023 3:49 PM EDT: It is worth noting that in 2022 Texas reached the highest number of heat-related deaths in over two decades, with at least 279 lives lost to the effects of extreme heat.

Categories: Labor, U.S. News