WASHINGTON – Congressional Democrats on Wednesday reintroduced the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, or PRO Act, a sweeping bill aimed at boosting union membership after decades of decline.
The legislation, led this year by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), would amount to the most significant overhaul to labor law in nearly 80 years, making it easier for workers to organize and bargain union contracts and more costly for employers to violate their rights.
“For too long, workers have suffered from anti-union attacks and toothless labor laws that have undermined their right to work safely and be paid fairly,” Scott said at a press conference at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday.
“In the last few weeks, we have seen Elon Musk, the wealthiest man on earth, single-handedly terminate the jobs of hundreds of thousands of federal employees,” Sanders added. “If Musk and his friends can arbitrarily fire hundreds of thousands of federal employees, what to you think they’ll do to the millions of workers who are impacted by technological revolution and artificial robotics?”
“The only protection that workers will have from massive layoffs,” the senator added, “is through forming unions, standing up for their rights, and making sure the new technology benefits workers and not just the oligarchs.”
The legislation was first introduced in Congress in 2019 with the support of a broad range of labor unions, progressive groups and worker advocates. But not every Democratic lawmaker was on board at the time, especially in the Senate, where a handful of members of the Democratic caucus had expressed concerns for businesses and independent contractors.
Now, with conservative Democrat Joe Manchin and independent Kyrsten Sinema retired and out of the Senate, support within the Democratic Party for the legislation is expected to be unanimous, a mark of progress for the labor movement despite the fact that Republicans control both chambers of Congress and aren’t likely to take it up.
In a sign of the shifting gravity within the party, Sen. Mark Kelly, an initial holdout on the bill, is cosponsoring it this year. The Arizona Democrat, who first embraced the bill last yearamid speculation that he would be picked as former Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2024 presidential running mate, said his support solidified after Donald Trump’s election in November.
“He’s making it abundantly clear that he is going to work on passing policies that help the wealthiest people, and these policies are often at the expense of working-class folks,” Kelly told HuffPost in an interview at his Capitol Hill office on Wednesday.
The PRO Act encompasses a host of reforms that labor unions have sought for years. It would create financial penalties for employers who commit unfair labor practices; bar companies from holding anti-union “captive-audience” meetings; make it easier for newly formed unions to secure their first contracts; strengthen a worker’s right to strike and boycott; and override anti-union “right to work” laws that suppress union membership.
Kelly and some other moderate Democrats have been hung up on a provision that would create a narrower definition of who qualifies as an “independent contractor.” The change would basically make it easier for workers who’ve been classified as contractors — such as truck drivers, gig workers and freelancers — to unionize and bargain.
“I don’t want to see people lose their jobs,” Kelly said Wednesday, adding that “it would be good to have an amendment process and we could make the legislation better.”
The legislation passed the Democratic-controlled House in 2020, but it has never come up for a vote in the Senate.
GOP opposition has been broad but not unanimous — Trump’s nominee for labor secretary, former Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (Ore.), was one of three House Republicans to cosponsor the legislation in the last Congress.
Facing pressure from Republicans during her confirmation hearing, Chavez-DeRemer renounced support for the bill’s provision that would preempt state “right to work” laws. Although Republican Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) voted against her nomination, several Democrats crossed the aisle and voted to advance Chavez-DeRemer out of committee due to her previous PRO Act support.
But Trump’s pick for labor secretary shouldn’t be taken as a sign he’ll support strong union rights. Shortly after his inauguration, he took the unprecedented step of firing a Democratic member of the National Labor Relations Board, eliminating its quorum and rendering it inoperable. Tasked with enforcing collective-bargaining rights, the NLRB would gain new enforcement powers under the PRO Act.
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“Donald Trump tries to make himself out to be like a pro-working-class person, but his policy is hard and he’s firing union members from the federal government,” Kelly told HuffPost, including axing government workers who “received performance reviews that were excellent.”
“I think we have to really all stand together at this point,” he added. “You’re either going to be with labor, with working-class people, or if we’re a little bit more fractured — that’s not helpful.”