Democrats introduce labor bill

House and Senate Democrats introduced sweeping legislation today to strengthen collective bargaining rights and increase penalties to employers when they violate labor laws.

The "Protecting the Right to Organize Act," introduced with 140 House and Senate co-sponsors, would permit the NLRB to level monetary fines against employers that terminate a worker wrongfully or that, in violating the National Labor Relations Act, cause a worker to suffer economic harm. Under current law, the NLRB may order reinstatement or collection of back pay, but it can't level fines.

The bill would allow the NLRB to hold corporate directors and officers individually liable for any violations of the NLRA of which they had prior knowledge. In addition, the bill would make it easier for independent contractors to establish in court that they are misclassified employees.

The bill includes two provisions intended to push back against recent Supreme Court decisions.

Addressing the Supreme Court's decision last year in Janus v. AFSCME, which ruled illegal the mandatory fair-share fees that public employee unions charge union nonmembers, the bill would allow employers and unions to agree contractually to the collection of such fees to help cover the cost of collective bargaining.

And reversing the high court's ruling in Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, which upheld employment contract clauses that compel workers to take any legal class actions against the company into private arbitration, the bill would bar such clauses, guaranteeing workers the right to take class actions against their employers into court.

The bill would also grant workers a private right of action, allowing them to bypass the NLRB and take lawsuits alleging violations of the NLRA directly to court. And the bill would bar employers from requiring workers to attend meetings in which management discourages them from unionizing.

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