The bill was promulgated by a Republican state senator who had been successfully sued by the union for wage theft:

Earlier today, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, a Democrat, signed the state’s Farm Act, which prohibits farmworkers’ unions from collecting union dues directly from workers’ paychecks.

Labor activists say that the provision in the bill, SB 615, was aimed at the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, which represents 10,000 farmworkers in North Carolina. Earlier this year, FLOC was able to force a major settlement from North Carolina State [Senator] Brent Jackson.

“This attack on farm workers’ rights is most likely in retaliation for a series of lawsuits brought by farm workers and their union (Farm Labor Organizing Committee) over wage theft and mistreatment on several farms in Eastern NC — including one owned by Sen. Brent Jackson, who sponsored this bill and chaired the Senate conference committee” said North Carolina AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer MaryBe McMillian. “It is a clear conflict of interest and blatant abuse of power for legislators who are also growers to push policies that allow them to gain more and more profit on the backs of their workers.”

Organized labor had hoped that Democratic Governor Roy Cooper would veto the bill,meeting with him twice to lobby against it. Yesterday, however, they received word that the Governor intended to sign it.

Normally, I’d be supportive of someone like Governor Cooper, but he could have vetoed it, even though there was a veto proof supermajority, or he could have allowed it to become law without his signature, signifying his disapproval.

He did neither, and I will neither forgive nor forget.