Statement on Justice Hector LaSalle

“The Communications Workers of America, along with many of our union allies, would condemn the appointment of Justice Hector LaSalle to Chief Judge, given his blatant anti-union stance that directly contradicts the rights of New York’s workers to organize. Despite long-established statutory law and judicial precedent in New York preventing employers from suing unions or union leaders, a move meant to hamper and silence organizing efforts, Justice LaSalle has previously joined an opinion circumventing that law and creating an exception to it without justification. His opinion in this case was to enlarge loopholes and create workarounds for large corporations, instead of protecting workers, and it is highly concerning at a time when workers across the state and country are fighting for fair wages and better working conditions at an unprecedented rate. Right now, the U.S. Supreme Court is about to hear a case that could significantly enhance corporations’ power to block union efforts by suing union leaders under state law, and if the conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court sweeps away the federal laws protecting workers from employer harassment, only the Court of Appeals will stand between workers and a new wave of anti-union activity in New York. New York deserves a Chief Judge that will have the backs of working people, not one whose actions suggest a hostility to labor and a willingness to champion his own policy vision over that of lawmakers, and it would be deeply harmful for Governor Hochul to undermine her own state’s laws by putting an opponent of workers’ rights on the state’s highest court.”

Dennis G. Trainor
Vice President
CWA District 1