A January survey of Montanans showed a large majority support workers' rights, even as several bills that could affect them move through the state Legislature.

The bipartisan firm Red America, Blue America Research asked about 500 Montanans their thoughts on labor and found 72% think unions help, rather than hurt, Montana's economy.

John Davis, founding partner of the polling firm, said support was even stronger across more specific questions.

"When we had asked a question about changing laws that would weaken employment protection -- so examples being safe work environments, wages, benefits -- 80% of respondents said they do not support efforts to reduce those protections," Davis reported.

Among respondents, 91% said Montana's workers should be able to join a union if they choose to and 87% said they would be less likely to support a legislator who voted to weaken workers' rights.

The survey also found most respondents were unaware lawmakers are currently considering legislation around allowing highly automated, driverless vehicles to operate on public roads in Montana.

"Driving is a major function of a significant percent of the American workforce," Davis pointed out. "So if that were to change, this would have a direct impact on people's livelihoods."

Of those who responded to the survey, 76% said they would not be comfortable sharing the road with driverless delivery vans.

Jason Small, executive secretary of the Montana AFL-CIO, said the status of union rights is an indicator of all workers' rights in the state.

"When the unions are in there, protecting workers' rights, it's not just the unions themselves they're protecting," Small emphasized. "We are the gold standard and we set the wages and the packages for everybody else. So, if we start to fail, the rest of the workers also begin failing."


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Professors on college campuses across the country are unionizing at increasingly higher rates and a bill in the Maryland General Assembly may help the efforts at state universities.

The legislation would give faculty at Morgan State University, St. Mary's College of Maryland, and faculty in the University of Maryland system the right to form a union. Another bill would also offer collective bargaining rights to graduate assistants at Maryland universities.

Del. Linda Foley, D-Montgomery, said the legislation would give teachers at each university the freedom to decide.

"If they desire and they vote for a union representative to represent them, then they can bargain a contract with their employer," Foley explained.

The bill includes full-time or part-time faculty, and those who are either on tenure or non-tenure tracks. Foley added faculty at Maryland community colleges are already able to organize unions.

Since 2012, the number of unionized faculty across the country has grown more than 7%, with more than a quarter of all faculty belonging to a union. More than 80% of unionized college faculty members are nontenured. Foley, a former vice president of the Communications Workers of America, said despite perceptions, unions are not just for blue collar workers.

"Just because they're not doing manual labor or you know working in a sweatshop so to speak, doesn't mean that workers don't have rights to collective bargaining or that collective bargaining isn't meaningful," Foley emphasized. "It certainly is, because there are many, many issues that collective bargaining can address."

She added workers could benefit from negotiating with an employer about hours, wages and working conditions which would otherwise be more difficult without a union.


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Consumer advocates in Virginia and around the country are trying to chart a new path forward as a federal consumer rights watchdog is being effectively "defanged."

In February, dozens of probationary employees at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau were fired.

Between 2021 and 2025, the bureau gave $9.4 billion back to consumers but the Trump administration has pulled the agency off numerous consumer protection lawsuits, including against major bank Capital One for allegedly cheating millions of customers out of $2 billion in interest.

Jay Speer, consumer rights attorney and executive director of the Virginia Poverty Law Center, said consumers will feel the brunt of the decisions.

"People not going to get all this money back that they should be getting from these wrongdoers," Speer pointed out. "Basically, it's a message to big companies that they can do whatever they want. Nobody's going to stop them, so abuse of consumers is just going to get worse. There's no question about it."

Russell Vought, Trump's director of the Office of Management and Budget, has posted on social media the bureau is "woke" and weaponized.

Advocates are putting up a fight. Speer pointed out his organization has joined a lawsuit to stop the bureau's closure. He argued administration efforts to disband the agency break the law and cut into Congress' power to create new federal agencies.

"Congress established this," Speer stressed. "It's not up to the executive branch to just do away with it by some executive order or whatever they claim they have the authority to do it. That's not right."

Conservatives called for the bureau's closure in Project 2025, which Vought helped author.

Union workers across Montana are celebrating the death of a bill which would have given employees the right to choose whether to join a union when hired by a represented company.

Known as the "right to work" bill, some said its title is misleading. More than 200 people signed up to speak against Senate Bill 376 at a hearing last Friday, and more joined them at a rally outside the Statehouse later in the day. Only two people testified in favor.

Jim Soumas, principal officer for Teamsters union Local 190, said it is "inappropriate" to expect unions to do their work with optional dues.

"It's like asking a business to provide a free service," Soumas pointed out. "There's cost to the union to provide professional representation and negotiation skills. We provide that for our members but that comes with a cost."

After the bill failed a committee vote Saturday, its sponsor, Sen. Mark Noland, R-Bigfork, tried to force it out of committee but 14 majority Republicans joined Democrats to block the move.

Jason Hottel, a member of Ironworkers Local 732, said early in his career, he worked in Idaho, a "right to work" state. He could not live off the wages, he said, so he moved back to Montana, a state with a strong union history.

"Since then, it's been night and day with what it's done for my life," Hottel explained. "The people around me and my children and everybody else involved with my life has been the biggest impact."

Hottel added he rallied at the Capitol to be an example for younger union workers. Montana is one of 23 states to have not passed so-called "right to work" legislation.