Protecting the Right to Organize Act of 2021

Floor Speech

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Ms. BONAMICI. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of the Protecting the Right to Organize Act.

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the urgent need for workers to have the right to negotiate for better wages, stronger benefits, and safer working conditions.

To keep our communities going, nurses, grocery store workers, firefighters, childcare workers, educators, healthcare workers, and more have been showing up to work every day, despite the risks. We have the opportunity to honor their work and to help restore fairness to our economy by making it easier for workers to form unions and collectively bargain.

The PRO Act will establish substantive and enforceable penalties for unlawful tactics employers take to interfere with workers' organizing a union. The legislation closes loopholes in labor laws that allow workers to be misclassified, provides them with protections of the National Labor Relations Act, bans captive audience meetings, and prohibits employers from interfering in union elections. It is the most significant workers' rights legislation in years and an important step in restoring the middle class.

Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record a letter from the BlueGreen Alliance in support of the PRO Act.

March 8, 2021.

Dear Representative: As a coalition of some of the nation's largest labor unions and environmental organizations, collectively representing millions of members and supporters, the BlueGreen Alliance and its partners write to express our support for the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act of 2021, H.R. 842.

In the United States, we face a critical juncture for the rights of employees to organize. Workers have faced wage stagnation, difficult working conditions, and a wholesale effort to decimate their ability to organize for the past several decades. Exploitation by employers of labor laws that have been made toothless has caused union membership to fall dramatically from 33 percent in 1956 to ten percent in 2018. As it stands, no meaningful penalties exist for corporations using illegal tactics to eliminate the option to organize. Workers, already facing record income inequality, now face job losses due to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. And we know the reality is that we went into this pandemic with three ongoing interconnected crises: economic inequality, racial inequality, and climate change.

Based on the National Bureau of Economic Research's statistics, we know that unions consistently provide working Americans with ten to twenty percent higher wages than non- unionized workers. Workers who are union members fare better in crises--whether the crisis is COVID-19 or climate change. During crises, unionized workers have better access to enhanced safety measures, unemployment insurance, additional pay, paid sick time, and input in the terms of furloughs or other job-saving arrangements. Empowering workers, whether they are in the private sector or in the public sector, to band together to negotiate better wages and safer working conditions is the best path forward to protecting our workers and rebuilding America's middle class.

Organizing does not just affect job quality, though: unionized workers are better equipped to handle potentially hazardous workplace situations, and have more freedom to blow the whistle in dangerous situations. This can avert industrial accidents and result in safer communities, as well as cleaner air and water. Many unions also take firm positions on environmental issues because they understand the impact that clean air and water have on workers. Unions have supported the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and other actions designed to both reduce the carbon pollution driving climate change and grow good-paying jobs in the clean economy. This bill can also help us close the gap in union density and job quality in our growing clean energy sectors.

The PRO Act empowers employees by strengthening workers' rights to bargain and to organize. It does so by ending prohibitions on collective and class-action litigation, prohibiting employers from permanently replacing striking employees, amending how employees are defined so that no one is misclassified as an independent contractor, strengthening remedies and enforcement for employees who are exercising their rights, creating a mediation and arbitration process for new unions, protecting against coercive captive audience meetings, and streamlining the National Labor Relations Board's procedures.

The PRO Act would take tangible steps to stem the tide of continued violations of the rights of working people to organize and would provide real consequences for those who violate the rights of workers. We must restore fairness to our economy so that workers no longer get a raw deal, and strengthen the right of workers all over the country to unionize and bargain for better working conditions. For these reasons, we urge you to vote yes on the PRO Act. Thank you for your consideration. Sincerely,

BlueGreen Alliance, American Federation of Teachers, International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers, International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, League of Conservation Voters, National Wildlife Federation, Natural Resources Defense Council, Service Employees International Union, Sierra Club, United Steelworkers Union, Utility Workers Union of American.

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Ms. BONAMICI. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to stand with workers and support this bill.

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