09.25.19

By: Eleanor Mueller
Source: Politico

House panel advances labor rights bill

The House Education and Labor Committee on Wednesday advanced a labor rights bill, H.R. 2474 (116), by a party-line vote of 26-21.

The bill is "the most comprehensive legislation in recent history to strengthen workers' right to organize and bargain for higher wages, better benefits and safer working conditions," Chairman Bobby Scott (D-Va.) said at the markup.

Ranking member Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) countered that the legislation was nothing more than "a sweeping and radical wishlist designed to appeal to union bosses and liberal Democrat primary voters, not American workers."

Lawmakers voted down 31 GOP amendments, including one from Foxx that would have renamed the bill the "Socialist Solutions for Unions Act."

The bill would strengthen workers' right to organize; allow employees to form unions under certain circumstances by "card check" (that is, through the informal collection of authorization forms from a majority within the bargaining unit); and grant the NRLB the power to levy punitive fines on employers (the NLRB is now permitted only to collect back pay from employers that violate labor laws).

"Frankly, it's a failure of policy [that] employers have been able to exploit weak labor laws as union membership has plummeted," Donna Shalala (D-Fla.) said at the markup. "But the PRO Act does something about it."

Members adopted four amendments, all offered by Democrats. One, from Frederica Wilson(D-Fla.), would make it an unfair labor practice for an employer to state falsely to a worker who must be classified under labor law as an employee that that person is not an employee. Another, from Andy Levin (D-Mich.), would give employees the right under certain circumstances to move a union election offsite or conduct it by mail.

The panel also adopted a substitute amendment from Scott that would strengthen an existing requirement that the NLRB submit an annual report to Congress; require employers to honor agreed-upon terms of employment unless a union agrees to change them; bar employers from withdrawing union recognition without a decertification election; require employers to provide union organizers a list of those in the bargaining unit in a searchable electronic format; allow employees to use employer-provided electronic devices for organizing and other NRLA-protected practices; and prevent employers from gerrymandering employee representation elections.

No bill of comparable magnitude to expand labor rights has cleared Congress since passage in 1947 of the anti-labor Taft-Hartley amendments to the National Labor Relations Act. The new bill is unlikely to be taken up by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in the Senate.