Though the PRO Act lacks sufficient Democratic support to pass the Senate through regular order, employers and workers should be on guard for those pushing the PRO Act to enact its anti-worker, anti-small business reforms by any means necessary.
Their first attempt will be to force portions of the PRO Act into Senate Democrats’ partisan reconciliation bill this fall.
The next step is to enact the remaining portions of the PRO Act by regulatory fiat through the National Labor Relations Board, a pivotal entity that falls into Democratic control this week.
Labor policy that creates an even playing field for workers and employers is a win for everyone. Our labor force is strongest when workers have the freedom to organize to advocate for better pay and conditions, as well as the freedom not to join a union.
Those favoring this legislation do not share that vision.
I’m not anti-union. I support freedom for workers to advocate for better pay, working conditions, and benefits. But violating the rights of workers across America to prop up an outdated system that benefits Washington elites and Democratic politicians is not pro-worker.
The PRO Act is a radical overhaul of our nation’s labor laws that nullifies “right to work” laws in 27 states, eliminates the gig economy, ends the franchise industry, affords illegal immigrants labor rights given to U.S. citizens, and paves the way for forced unionization.
By allowing agreements that would force workers to pay into a union or face termination, the PRO Act makes 27 state “right to work” laws obsolete.
By altering the definition of the “ABC Test” (the three-part test that determines who is an independent contractor), the PRO Act will effectively ban freelance workers from benefiting from the gig economy.
By expanding the definition of a “joint employer” in an overly broad manner to organize more workers under the control of a corporate headquarter, the PRO Act will threaten the existence of the franchise model as we know it, cutting off access to upward mobility for Main Street entrepreneurs.
By reversing the Supreme Court’s decision in Hoffman Plastic Compounds v. the NLRB, the PRO Act will give illegal immigrants labor rights otherwise afforded to U.S. citizens.
The PRO Act diminishes worker privacy and freedom not to engage in union activity by cobbling together more than 50 imbalanced amendments to the National Labor Relations Act. These reforms include undermining secret ballot elections with a “card check” system that subjects workers to peer pressure and intimidation and anti-privacy reforms such as requiring workers to provide unions with work shift and personal contact information.
For these reasons and many others, it’s concerning that congressional Democrats may attempt to force the PRO Act outside regular order.
The Senate recently approved a partisan budget resolution to facilitate the Democrats’ $4.2 trillion tax-and-spend agenda through the budget reconciliation process. As part of this process, the Senate committee with jurisdiction over labor is instructed to report legislation that could include significant portions of the PRO Act.
Regardless of whether Democrats successfully pass portions of the PRO Act in the halls of Congress, employers and workers should keep a close eye on the National Labor Relations Board. This week, Republican control of this key labor regulatory body ends.
The NLRB will now be controlled by a new Democratic majority with Biden board appointees and a new general counsel, all former union lawyers.
Why does this matter? The NLRB is tasked with overseeing the National Labor Relations Act — the same statute the PRO Act seeks to alter.
The newly constituted NLRB is set to repeat the Obama-era NLRB’s administrative rewrite of the country’s labor laws, seeking to corrupt the balance between employers and unions that is most beneficial to workers.
For the last four years under President Donald Trump, the Republican-controlled NLRB worked to restore common sense to our labor laws. For example, the Trump NLRB repealed the ambush election rules that forced employees to decide whether to join a union in an unreasonably short time frame.
The Trump NLRB eliminated so-called microunits that allowed unions to organize small groups of employees at a workplace. It reinstated the traditional tests for determining joint-employer and independent contractor status, reversing the Obama NLRB’s expansive definitions that restricted individual freedoms for workers and business owners, especially franchises and gig economy workers.
All of these gains for worker freedom are at risk under this new board.
Huge labor reforms that affect every worker should be debated through a real process, not through a partisan fast-track that seeks to push an uneven agenda.
I also hope that the newly constituted NLRB will fight the temptation to give into such ideological pressures and instead follow the path of the Trump NLRB, which valued even playing fields and full rulemaking processes as a means of providing better legal clarity and stability.
Our goal as labor policymakers and regulatory bodies should be to provide businesses with the framework to create jobs, compete, and grow and to provide workers with sound, consistent rules that they need to know so their rights can be protected.
The PRO Act does none of this. That’s why it doesn’t have the votes to become law. But that won’t stop Democrats from forcing it on you anyway.
Mike Braun is the junior U.S. senator from Indiana.
