Protecting the Right to Organize Act of 2019

Floor Speech

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Mr. SMUCKER. Mr. Chair, I rise today in strong opposition to the PRO Act.

Today's egregious legislation really is mislabeled. It is called the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, but it really should be renamed the Unfair to American Workers, or the UAW, Act.

I strongly agree that our constitutionally guaranteed rights, like the freedom of association, should be protected, but this bill doesn't strengthen protections for all Americans. This bill upsets the balance between the right of employees to form a union and the right of individuals to refrain from joining a union.

H.R. 2474 deliberately speeds up the union election process so that employees do not have the time to fully vet the pros and cons of joining a union.

This bill also strips away critical privacy rights by forcing employers to hand over sensitive private employee information, such as where an employee lives, what work shifts they work, and more.

Why do they want this information? So union leaders can stalk and harass employees until they agree to sign up.

The PRO Act, in fact, leaves no corner of labor law untouched. This bill will disrupt the franchise model to eliminate a franchisee's ability to operate their business as their own, and it even decimates the sharing economy by codifying California's ABC test.

What is worse, this bill repeals every right-to-work law in the Nation, forcing millions of Americans to contribute to a union that they don't need or that they don't want.

I offered a commonsense amendment to this bill that would require unions to seek employee consent when using dues for political purposes, but my amendment was blocked by Democrats from being even debated on the House floor.

My colleagues on the left will claim that economic inequality has resulted because of declining union membership, but we know this isn't true. The economic success that we are seeing today, particularly for minority groups who have historically faced the most inequality, is changing thanks to policies put in place by a Republican Congress and by President Trump. Wage growth is rising faster today for minorities and individuals most impacted by economic inequality than for any other group.

Rather than innovating to become more attractive to employees so they want to join, unions are trying to change Federal law to stack the deck against hardworking Americans.

Americans aren't rejecting union membership because current labor law acts as a barrier to forming one. They are declining to join because they are sick of seeing union leaders harass and coerce their colleagues; line their own pockets with dues, as we have seen exhibited in the recent racketeering acts committed by former UAW leaders; and use employee dues to support political platforms that don't align with an individual's views.

Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to oppose this harmful power grab.

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