The GOP's Job Outsourcers’ Bill of Rights: Facts on HR 2587

H.R. 2587 would remove the only meaningful remedy available to workers if a company illegally moves operations or eliminates work because workers engaged in protected activities While an employer is free to move operations as they see fit, they cannot do so for an unlawful reason. Retaliating against workers for exercising their rights under the National Labor Relations Act is one such unlawful reason.

H.R. 2587 will render workers’ rights unenforceable and allow more jobs to be shipped overseas. It is nothing more than a rush to protect one special interest to the detriment of all American workers.

The Republican bill makes it easier to ship jobs overseas.

If a company closes an entire U.S. plant or part of a U.S. plant and moved the work to China because the U.S. employees organized a union, the NLRB would no longer have the power to order the work to be kept in or returned to the U.S. 

In 2000, the National Labor Relations Board obtained an order to force a company to bring work back to the United States from Mexico after the company allegedly outsourced the work in response to an organizing drive. That order would no longer be available to workers under the Republicans’ bill.

The Republican bill creates a new race to the bottom for American workers’ rights, wages, benefits and working conditions, and is bad for the economy.

By allowing employers to discriminate against workers who exercise their right to join together and bargain for better wages without an effective remedy, the Republican bill plays American workers against each other.  It presents workers with a choice:  your rights or your job.  Without effective rights, wages and benefits deteriorate, depressing demand and economic activity.

The Republican bill provides employers with a new loophole to fire workers who try to organize a union.

To kill an organizing drive, an employer could eliminate or transfer work being done by pro-union employees and then lay off those employees. This bill would not allow the NLRB to have that work restored or transferred back.   

The Republican bill makes runaway shops legal for all intents and purposes.

A company could bust a union by setting up a separate alter ego down the street, subcontract its work there, and eventually close down the unionized worksite. The only effective remedy for that kind of conduct is to order the employer to return the subcontracted work. This bill would no longer allow that remedy.

See all the letters of opposition to H.R. 2587

Read Rep. Miller's remarks on the Job Outsourcers' Bill of Rights