Exclusive | Sen. Bill Cassidy claims Hochul hurting workers with unconstitutional NY state labor law

WASHINGTON — A top Republican senator accused New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and Empire State Democrats Wednesday of trying to “undermine workers’ rights” by claiming the state can intervene in labor disputes in the absence of federal mediation.

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who chairs the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP), fired off a letter to Hochul protesting a law she signed earlier this month permitting Albany to stick its nose in private sector labor matters — including union elections and collective bargaining battles.

“President Trump and [Labor] Secretary [Lori] Chavez-DeRemer are committed to delivering the most pro-worker administration in history,” Cassidy said in a statement obtained by The Post.

“It’s unacceptable that Kathy Hochul and liberal New York Democrats are violating the Constitution to undermine workers’ rights.”  

Hochul, 67, signed Senate Bill 8034A into law Sept. 5, empowering New York’s Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) to handle issues that previously fell under the purview of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

The NLRB is tasked with enforcing the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, which protects most private sector workers’ rights to form and join unions and polices federal labor law violations — a role the Supreme Court has previously affirmed.

The board has been bogged down by a backlog of cases, to the point that earlier this year, the independent agency’s acting counsel, William Cowen, said that the logjam has reached a point where it is “no longer sustainable.”

Cowen previously warned states not to encroach on NLRB-related cases and announced last week NLRB had sued New York to enjoin the law.

Tech giant Amazon on Monday sued PERB for intervening in a case involving a former Staten Island employee and local union vice president who was fired by the company.

NLRB had already started reviewing that case, according to the lawsuit.

“New York has created the collision of state and federal authority Congress sought to avoid,” Amazon’s legal team wrote in the suit.

The NLRB currently lacks a quorum, because it only has one board member when it should have five. In July, Trump nominated Scott Mayer and James Murphy to the board in order to acheieve a three-member quorum needed to decide disputes. However, the Senate has yet to act on Mayer and Murphy’s nominations.

While the New York measure defers cases over which the NLRB “successfully asserts jurisdiction,” it mandates the state to jump into issues the federal government hasn’t addressed.

Democratic proponents of New York’s law insist the measure is needed to counter any prospective rollback of labor protections by the Trump administration while the NLRB is inactive.

But Cassidy said the law would merely create “confusion or undue difficulty” for workers.

“Workers in New York, and across the United States, should be able to assert their rights without confusion or undue difficulty,” he wrote to Hochul. “They should not be expected to be labor law experts.”

“The practical impact of this law will be mistaken filings by well-meaning workers who desire to follow the law and orders from the PERB that imply a worker’s issue has been resolved when, in reality, the correct agency to hear their claim is not aware the claim exists.”

The HELP Committee chairman further warned that the New York law “accomplishes the opposite of its purported goal, which is to help workers.”

Cassidy demanded Hochul answer a series of questions about the state law — including its impact on workers, its jurisdictional basis, and whether the state will reimburse laborers who need to refile claims to the NLRB — by Oct.8.

The Post reached out to a Hochul spokesperson for comment.