After 24 years of Republican control, a Democrat with a union card promises change, while his GOP opponent defends the status quo.

By Greg Childress

NC Newsline

North Carolina will have a new commissioner of labor in 2025. Republican incumbent Josh Dobson, a former state representative, is not seeking reelection after a single four-year term. He replaced the state’s most well-known commissioner, Cherie Berry, a Republican who served in the office for 20 years and embraced the label “elevator lady” because her picture was plastered on certificates hanging in every elevator in the state.

Now, after a quarter century in which Republicans with a pro-business slant have controlled the department, Democrat Braxton Winston II — a pro-labor union member from Charlotte — is seeking to effect a turnaround in what he and many critics say has been a sleepy and understaffed agency. Meanwhile, Republican nominee Luke Farley — an arch-conservative Raleigh attorney — is promising more of the same.

Berry has endorsed Farley in the General Election.

A Democrat promises change and new energy

The labor commissioner is a constitutional officer elected statewide. The commissioner serves a four-year term that runs concurrently with governor and other members of the Council of State. The commissioner is head of the Department of Labor and is charged by statute to promote the “health, safety and general well-being” of the state’s more than four million workers. The laws and program administered by the department affects every worker in the state.

Democrat Braxton Winston II, a former Charlotte city council member who works as a union stagehand and grip in the Queen City, wants to bring about a sea change in the agency. He says the two Republican commissioners have “intentionally eroded” safety protections for state workers.

A top priority, Winston told PBS North Carolina, will be to adequately staff the Labor Department with safety compliance officers to conduct inspections. He contends a quarter of such jobs are unfilled.

“My Number One priority will be to make sure that this department is not just fully staffed, but adequately staffed to do the important jobs that need to be done — those safety inspections that we rely on, whether it’s responding to reports of dangerous and unhealthy working conditions or times that workers have been retaliated against or being taken advantage of by their employers,” Winston said.

In addition to working to fully staff the department, Winston pledges on his campaign page that he will also ensure worker safety, advocate for fair wages, defend workers’ rights and take a “whole worker” approach to leading the department.

According to his campaign page, the “whole worker” approach includes:

• Working to eliminate poverty in the state workforce.
• Closing the digital divide and training the next workforce.
• Working with partners to increase access to health care for all workers.
• Advocating for accessible and well-funded child care.
• Providing dependable access to transportation.
• Working with partners to increase access to affordable housing and eliminating homelessness in North Carolina with a focus on the veteran population.
• Reducing the number of workers living in food deserts.

“I understand the challenges that working families face all across this state day-to-day,” Winston said during a PBS North Carolina interview. “I’m a guy who clocks in and clocks out. That, combined with being the former Mayor Pro Tem on the Charlotte city council where I served three terms, I’ve certainly come to believe that our state has everything it takes to be No.1 for both business and workers.”

Winston also said that unions help to promote fairness for workers and employers. It’s through unions that workers and employers hold each other accountable, he said.

“Frankly, we don’t have enough of that fairness in our workforces throughout the state,” Winston said. “I think it could go a long way, again, to making us the No. 1 state for businesses and workers if we had a stronger labor movement.”

Conservatives make peace, back Republican nominee

Farley, whose law practice focuses on construction law, offers a very different platform. He says he wants to make North Carolina the “safest place on earth to work and the best place to do business.”

“This office can be North Carolina’s secret weapon for economic development,” Farley said during the PBS interview. “If this office is well run, if our labor and employment laws are enforced in a fair and even-handed way, it tells people that this is a place where you want to do business.”

Despite Farley’s pledge, the conservative North Carolina Chamber of Commerce initially sounded an alarm about the Republican’s far-right politics, lumping him in with Michele Morrow, the GOP’s far-right candidate for state Superintendent of Public Instruction, as major threats to the state’s robust business reputation.

The Chamber had backed Farley’s primary opponent, state Rep. Jon Hardister. At first, the group lamented Farley’s “far-right” positions, which includes banning vaccine requirements for employees and his perplexing call to make “elevators great again.”

“Didn’t we learn anything from big government’s first shutdown of our schools and businesses?” Farley said on his campaign website in January. “We don’t need any new COVID workplace mandates. On my first day as Labor Commissioner, I’ll immediately start working to repeal any new mandates that are imposed.”

Soon after Farley’s primary victory, however, the Chamber changed its tune. In an editor’s note to its March 6 post attacking Farley’s candidacy, the organization said it now saw an “opportunity to work well with Mr. [Luke] Farley should he be elected commissioner. Farley is a “sharp contrast to his opponent,” the chamber said.

“Our vision for North Carolina includes maintaining our competitive position as a right-to-work state and Mr. Farley shares that vision,” he note said. “Additionally, Mr. Farley has proven a tremendous grasp on the business community’s concerns with the first-ever Federal Heat Standard (a set of regulations designed to protect workers) looming from the Biden administration. “We look forward to seeing additional distinctions between these two candidates’ positions emerge and will continue to update our membership accordingly.”

Farley told PBS North Carolina that the state has enjoyed 24 “good years of commonsense leadership” under Berry and Dobson.

“I’m going to be a commissioner in the mold of Cherie Berry and Josh Dobson, doing that commonsense leadership that promotes job growth in North Carolina,” Farley said.

In her final term, Berry was roundly criticized for her COVID-19 response, including a ruling that the virus isn’t a workplace hazard, so no rules were needed to protect workers. Berry was also the subject of several media investigations during her tenure in which she was accused of not protecting the health and safety of workers. Farley features her image and endorsement prominently on his website.

Investigative Reporter Greg Childress covers issues related to poverty, homelessness, and housing policy.