Over the last decade Rhode Island has been a hotbed of progressive, pro-worker legislation. But it wasn’t always this way. It took years of proactive organizing by the labor movement on legislative and electoral campaigns.
This “blue” New England state was led by Republican Governor Donald Carcieri from 2003 to 2011. During his term he cut 1,000 public sector jobs, passed a regressive property tax law, and attacked pensions for teachers and other public workers—actions that were enabled by centrist Democrats in the state legislature who were lukewarm towards labor.
That’s when forces in labor began to think more seriously about
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