Red State Bills Resisting UAW Growth Risk Labor Law Override

A United Auto Workers organizing campaign at southern plants including Volkswagen AG, Hyundai Motor Co., and Mercedes-Benz has reinvigorated union resistance from Republican state lawmakers and inspired secret-ballot-election bills that set up a clash with federal labor law.

States traditionally lack authority to govern private-sector collective bargaining, as that oversight is reserved in federal labor law and handled by the National Labor Relations Board. But laws recently enacted in Georgia and Tennessee, plus a similar bill moving through Alabama’s legislature, test those limits by requiring employers that receive economic development incentives to demand secret-ballot union elections rather than ...