The bill creating a new legal privilege between unions and union members has been scheduled for a public hearing this week in the Senate.

We wrote extensively about HB 1187 in last week’s Bulletin here. As we outlined, AWC has a position of “other” on the bill because we agree it’s appropriate to have some confidentiality protections for communications between unions and their members made during representation. However, we are still concerned that the broad union-member privilege as currently drafted could negatively impact cities.

AWC will raise the following issues that the bill should:

• Ensure that witnesses called to testify by a union or union member against a city are subject to normal rules for discovery, cross examination, and waiver of privilege (just like attorneys or doctors).
• Clarify that the privilege rests with the employee, except to the extent that one employee can’t unilaterally waive privilege for other employees.
• Clarify that the privilege doesn’t inhibit a city’s ability to fully investigate and take appropriate action in employee misconduct situations, like harassment or discrimination, or in mandatory reporting situations

If cities have other questions or concerns about the bill, feel free to reach out to us at Candice Bock or Matt Doumit. You can sign up to testify or submit written comments here.

Dates to remember

HB 1187 is scheduled for public hearing in the Senate Law & Justice Committee on Thursday, March 23 at 8 am.