The Alabama Senate has passed a Constitutional amendment reinforcing Alabama's position as a so-called "right-to-work" state. APR’s Stan Ingold has more.
Senators passed the amendment 25 votes to 9. Alabama voters will now have the chance to approve the amendment at the ballot box in November.
Right-to-work states prohibit companies from requiring workers to pay union dues as a condition of employment.
Alabama law already has the prohibition, but Republicans say adding the amendment to the state Constitution will give businesses additional assurances.
In a debate on the Senate floor, Minority Leader Quinton Ross called the amendment "asinine" and a waste of time and money. Ross says lawmakers have more important issues they should address.
A seafood company in south Alabama has agreed to pay a group of migrant workers back wages in a class action lawsuit.
Earlier this week, a federal judge ordered R&A Oysters to pay 18 migrant workers more than $30,000 in back wages and attorney fees. The laborers were brought from Mexico on temporary work visas to shuck oysters at the company's facility in Mobile County.
Attorneys for the Louisiana-based company and lawyers representing the workers agreed to a consent judgment to settle claims that workers were paid less than the federal minimum wage.
R&A hasn't yet addressed workers' claims of retaliation and breach of contract.
The Southern Poverty Law Center civil rights advocacy group represented the workers.
The Huntsville Police Department and CVS Pharmacy are teaming up to make discarded medications less dangerous.
They’re establishing the first round-the-clock drop box for unwanted or expired medicines in the Huntsville area. People who want to discard their medications have to leave them in the original box or bottle and remove the labels. The drop box does not accept loose medicine, needles or illegal narcotics.
Deborah Soule is the Executive Director for the Partnership for a Drug Free Community. She believes this is a productive way to prevent the abuse of prescription drugs.
“It will lower the rate of people that find it too easy to take the pills that are lying around. And what we are doing is called prevention; you get the drugs out of the house and discard it in the right source, and it is also an awareness campaign.”
The drop box is meant to raise awareness on how dangerous leaving pills around the house can be.
The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department says it seized nearly 100 illegal gambling machines during raids at two businesses.
Sheriff's spokesman Randy Christian says investigators searched two businesses in Brighton earlier this week and found dozens of illegal gambling machines inside.
Christian says the department began investigating the businesses on Monday after hearing complaints from residents. Officials from the Alabama Attorney General's Office helped execute the search warrants.
60 machines were seized from one business and 30 were taken from another. Authorities say the investigation is ongoing and arrests are pending.