If Rep. Darrell Issa Is Against It, This Labor Law Reform Must Be Good
The US House of Representatives has passed a sweeping, ‘bipartisan’ labor bill, the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act. San Diego’s District 50 Congressman has taken to Twitter to spin the legislation in an unflattering way. In Issa’s case, this means he lied in a manner designed to play upon people’s fears.
In a testament to how divided the Congress has become, three Republicans as co-sponsors and a couple more breaking from the party caucus, means legislation gets labelled bi-partisan. The Tuesday evening vote in the House was 225-206.
Here’s Issa:
Tonight, I voted against the PRO Act, one of the most partisan and divisive labor bills ever. It is extreme and inflexible, will diminish the rights of workers and employers, and rewrite the nation’s labor laws in favor of union special interests. But that's not the worst of it.
There’s a lot to unpack in Issa’s condemnation. Suffice it to say the legislation updates the purview of the National Labor Relations Act, washing away the stains of decades of neglect and pro-management actions.
Republicans are fond of always spitting out the words “special interests” when it comes to labor unions. It’s a classic case of rhetorical projection, since the original use of those words meant sub rosa corporate shenanigans.
These days, when I see those words used in any context, red flags go up. It’s a way of not discussing the underlying issues, and I don’t care if the speaker is right or left. The same right wing people who call unions ‘special interest’ also seem to think people can live on $7.25 an hour. Lefties, this is just some lazy crap. (Recall Dr. Jen Campbell backers; if the shoe fits, wear it.)
In the case of the PRO Act, the business of worker representation is getting a much-needed update.
From NPR:
Union leaders say the Protecting the Right to Organize Act — PRO Act — would finally begin to level a playing field they say is unfairly tilted toward big business and management, making union organizing drives and elections unreasonably difficult.
"The PRO Act would protect and empower workers to exercise our freedom to organize a bargain," Richard Trumka, the president of the AFL-CIO, told NPR in a recent interview. "It's a game changer. If you really want to correct inequality in this country — wages and wealth inequality, opportunity and inequality of power — passing the PRO Act is absolutely essential to doing that."
If the truth was to be told, Issa and his ilk would prefer to simply eliminate federal involvement in management/labor relations.
The biggest lies being passed off as truth by anti-union types are the references to “job killer AB5,” the California law concerning the abuse of independent contractor status.
https://twitter.com/LorenaSGonzalez/status/1369429034933891075?s=20
After being amended to exclude numerous professions, it was replaced with an industry sponsored (to the tune of $200 million) Proposition 22 in November 2020, thanks to AB5 being sold as a law taking away the rights of people to make a living.
Needless to say, law written by corporate lawyers has been mostly blue smoke and mirrors. Promised benefits are difficult to obtain and legal challenges to actions taken by the companies behind this bill are impossible, thanks to forced arbitration clauses. Amending and/or overturning Prop 22 requires a ⅞ majority in the legislature.
What the PRO Act does is to allow workers who want to unionize to avoid getting tagged as independent contractors.
From Vox:
“It is a serious problem when employers misclassify employees as independent contractors in order to prevent their workers from organizing,” House Education and Labor Committee Chair Bobby Scott (D-VA) told Vox in a statement. “The PRO Act closes that loophole by giving eligible freelancers and gig workers, who are classified as employees, the right to decide for themselves whether to form a union. Or not.”
Scott added, “Anyone making wild claims that this bill would mean the end of freelancing or restrict workers’ flexibility is either mistaken or deliberately misrepresenting the facts.”
The bill IS ambitious and wide ranging. Previous attempts at piecemeal reform have gone nowhere as various politicians who claim to be pro-union decide they don’t want to spend political capital on them.
Click on the link for an explainer from the Economic Policy Institute.
Here’s Alex Press in Jacobin, looking at it from the left:
This is a familiar dynamic in recent history. When the Democratic Party wins the White House and control of Congress, unions push for labor law reform. And every time, the push fails. The most recent example came in Barack Obama’s presidency: in the 2008 campaign, unions backed Obama, and he promised to push for the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which would have made unionizing easier for tens of millions of currently unorganized workers. Once in the White House, Obama, like so many Democrats before him, quietly dropped his promise to working-class people. EFCA never became law.
This history suggests reason for skepticism when it comes to elected officials’ promises to the PRO Act’s proponents in the labor movement. Still, those leading the push say they’ve learned from that history, and have taken it into account in shaping both their strategy for pushing the bill and the specifics of the legislation itself.
Right wingers around the country are in full panic mode, as this story from Fox News indicates: PRO Act gains socialist support: The Democratic bill that would crush right-to-work laws
The Chamber of Commerce, the National Manufacturers Association and the National Restaurant Association are all making defeating this bill a priority.
Virtually every mainstream media account about the PRO Act includes the disclaimer that it will never pass the Senate, thanks to the filibuster.
Organized labor, via the AFL-CIO’s executive board is meeting today to consider doing what’s necessary to make the PRO Act, namely putting its weight behind eliminating the filibuster.
AS Hamilton Nolan observes at In These Times:
AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka has said “The PRO Act is our litmus test,” which should imply that opposition to the filibuster is a litmus test as well. At this point, eliminating the filibuster is part and parcel of the progressive reforms that we are all trying to get passed. Claiming to support the PRO Act, or a strong green infrastructure bill, or the voting rights bill, without supporting the end of the filibuster, is like claiming to support going into a building but refusing to open the door. Assuming that you don’t enjoy banging your head against the wall endlessly, you must do one in order to do the other.
It’s good that major unions are running publicity campaigns touting the PRO Act. It will also go down as a lot of wasted effort if we are not able to do away with the filibuster, as it seems rather futile to do all this work to promote a bill that will just languish in a Senate drawer. Ending the filibuster is a labor fight. It is an environmental fight. It is a healthcare fight. It is equivalent to the substance of all these issues themselves, because it is the thing that enables them to happen. There is a coalition to be built on this issue — of every progressive in America who wants tangible gains in the next two years — that is broad and powerful enough to push the Democratic Party where it needs to go.
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Want to make a Republican crazy? Show them this and say it's serious...
https://twitter.com/owillis/status/1369739122995249152?s=20
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