Alabama Senate votes to put anti-union law in the state constitution

Because it's not enough to have anti-union laws on the books merely as regular laws, Alabama Republicans are seeking to write it into their state's constitution that workers covered by a union contract don't have to pay any of the costs of their representation. The state Senate passed the proposed amendment, which now goes to the House and then will be voted on in the next general election.

Republican legislators said all the usual things about how the law attracts jobs to their state, a zombie claim made every time Republicans are pushing such a law, despite being unsupported by any reliable data. Here's the thing:

Democratic Sen. Bobby Singleton of Greensboro said putting it in the constitution is unnecessary because no one has tried to repeal the right-to-work law.

"Times change in this legislative body," said [the amendment's sponsor, state Sen. Gerald] Dial, who noted he had been a Democrat and an independent prior to becoming a Republican.

Oh, well, that's a good answer. "Nobody's trying to repeal this law." "But I repealed my former party affiliation, therefore somebody might someday try to repeal this law."

The good news, such as it is, is that it's not like putting a free rider law in the Alabama constitution makes anyone's life any worse. And while it would make the law a lot harder to repeal in the event that Alabama shifted to being a Democratic state, that's not likely to happen anytime soon.