It’s easy to get an idea of what Employment Related legislation is currently pending in Missouri

The mere fact that a bill is pending does NOT mean it will pass. The great majority of bills die. But here’s an easy way for you to quickly get a feel for what might be working it’s way through the system. You can then decide whether to write to your legislator or even show up at a hearing, to support or oppose a particular bill.

• WHERE TO GO: You have to visit the Joint Bill Tracking Service and do some searches. Missouri Legislature Joint Bill Tracking Service.
• WHAT YOU WILL SEE: At the top of the page on the Joint Bill Tracking screen you will see a search box. The first field of the box is labeled “Search”. Put a search word in that field. It isn’t necessary to change any of the other search options, if you want to see proposed legislation from the current session.
• WHAT TO SEARCH FOR: Use one search word at a time, and view the results for each search. If you do 4 searches, you will probably catch just about everything employment-related. I suggest the following search words, to be used one at a time: Workforce, Industrial, Employee, Labor.

Be warned: A whole lot of legislation (on many topics) is written in a way that suggests we are being given an increased level of protection, but in fact the purpose of the legislation is to DIMINISH our rights and protections. You might not know whether the legislation is improving things or hurting things, unless you know how the same issues are currently being handled by the courts or the existing laws.

Many times, legislation is a response to a court decision. A legislator might not like the way a court ruled, and so the legislator writes a new law, where the effect of the law would be to prevent any other court from ruling the same way as the offending court.

So don’t get too excited over any particular piece of legislation, not unless you know enough to know whether the law improves our rights or diminishes our rights.