Issue: Economic Opportunity

Labor Day gives Alabamians an opportunity to celebrate the contributions that workers across our state and country make to keep our vital institutions operating and build a better world for all people. We live in a state where powerful and wealthy interests often leverage money and influence to discourage workers from unionizing. But even in the face of corporate opposition both in the state and nationally, workers and their unions have won many improvements, including overtime pay, a five-day workweek, child labor protections and workplace safety standards.

All these worker protections, and the unions that help safeguard them, are under attack now. The National Labor Relations Board has been non-functional for most of 2025 and recently received two anti-worker appointments. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration also has been under attack, diminishing workplace safety protections. Dismantling federal protections likely will embolden bad-actor companies and could result in more illegal or unethical employer practices.

Amid the changing federal regulatory landscape, claims of employer abuses have continued. During the 2024 organizing campaign with United Auto Workers at the Mercedes facility in Vance, workers accused the company of many union-busting activities, ranging from charges of worker intimidation to illegal retaliatory firing of union supporters. And during the recent Navistar election in Huntsville, workers allege the company violated its own neutrality policy and manipulated the election through gamesmanship regarding provision of health benefits.

Meanwhile, the White House recently has ramped up its worker attacks even further. These attacks include canceling contracts that protect thousands of Veterans Administration workers. This move likely will diminish quality of care for veterans nationwide.

Even against a stacked deck, improvement is possible

Workers unionized in the private sector and state and local governments have mobilized in opposition to the White House’s wholesale assault on federal workers’ rights in solidarity with federal workers. Workers’ unions and labor federations this Labor Day are having rallies and protests across the country to support worker protections and oppose federal attacks on unions and workers who are union members.

Well-funded anti-worker lobbies are strong institutions in Alabama. They remain powerful remnants of the state’s centuries-old plantation economy. But working people’s efforts to secure a stable, prosperous future for all Alabamians continue. And recently, they have borne fruit.

Efforts to provide paid parental leave to public school teachers, state employees and two-year college workers were successful this year. As of July 1, these groups of vital workers have increased economic stability through the provision of eight weeks of paid leave for mothers and two weeks for fathers. These state efforts have built on other, less expansive wins in other Southern states.

But these efforts rely on a limited view of good employment principles and the state’s role in providing quality jobs to the people who do the work. With educators and state employees, state agencies are acting as an employer, not as a regulator. Broader efforts to ensure paid leave and other concrete improvements for workers’ lives could face a drastically different response. Moreover, Alabama’s declining private-sector unionization rate reflects how workers face more limits in seeking better pay and treatment.

Job quality in Alabama is persistently low

The lower unionization rate has resulted in suboptimal job quality policies in areas beyond subpar wages. Workers fought unsuccessfully last year against anti-union legislation and a measure to reduce existing child labor protections. While undermining laws that protect working Alabamians’ well-being, state officials have continued to give billions of dollars in tax incentives and subsidies to private companies.

These giveaways persist even when those companies benefit from child labor law violations. A bill to restrict taxpayer money from going to child labor law violators came up just short in 2025. Alabama Arise and our partners will advocate to get this important legislation across the finish line next year.

Alabamians labor in a state where numerous employment practices and policies prevent many of them from building stability and improving their overall well-being. More than 1 in 5 Alabama workers (22%) are paid less than $15 per hour. That is a poverty wage for a family of four and less than half of what that family needs to thrive. Alabama’s workers also make less, even after adjusting for lower cost of living, than workers in Rust Belt states like Illinois, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

These anti-worker policies are enforced statewide even when some localities are open to requiring good jobs and worker protections. Alabama cities and counties are heavily preempted by state law. The state bans local governments from enforcing worker protections like fair scheduling, minimum wages, breaks and a host of other job quality safeguards.

The shortcomings of Alabama’s low-road economic development model reach far beyond employers’ failure to pay adequate wages. Southern workers broadly have less access to paid leave than other workers. And though teachers and state employees now have paid parental leave protections, Alabamians working in the private sector still have no such protections under state law.

Alabama’s workers are essential, not disposable

Despite advancements, Alabama workers still lack guaranteed paid sick leave, caregiving leave, domestic violence leave and bereavement leave. With the state shutting the door on local efforts to give workers a square deal by preempting any local legislation to improve conditions for workers, lawmakers have funneled the fight for decent treatment through legislation into the State House – and even more so into communities and workplaces themselves. Organizing campaigns remain the primary vehicle for workers to protect themselves and ensure a brighter future for their families.

Hostility to workers has left Alabama’s workers significantly behind across the board. And this mindset unfortunately is not limited to our state. Other Southern states have passed policies that restrict community benefits agreements, which improve aspects of the communities where corporate facilities are located. These shortsighted efforts are largely indefensible, but Alabama’s workers still are likely to face attempts to pass the same policies here. Efforts like these can make workers more reluctant to stand up for their rights when bosses abuse them.

The low road to economic development doesn’t make sense. The people who do the work in Alabama are essential, not disposable. Without a thriving working class, the economy grinds to a halt. Our state’s traditional top-down economic model is a key reason why Alabama’s outcomes fall measurably short in important areas like earnings, health care and educational attainment.

A better path forward is available for Alabama. This Labor Day, state decision-makers should dedicate themselves to building a worker-focused economy built on raising the well-being of all Alabamians, not just those at the top.