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Floor Speech

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Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this amendment. Prohibiting employers from Federal contracts for violations of the National Labor Relations Act, NLRA, circumvents longstanding compliance procedures and would have a significant impact on Federal contractors.

The prohibition duplicates existing safeguards in the Federal contracting process that already has a system in place to deny Federal contracts to companies that break the law. This flawed blacklisting amendment will threaten Federal contractors' due process rights because a Federal contractor could be prohibited from DOD contracts before a charge has been fully adjudicated.

An employer can be found to have violated the NLRA by an administrative law judge, but the employer has the right to appeal that decision to the National Labor Relations Board. Employers also have the right to appeal NLRB decisions to the U.S. Court of Appeals.

It is unfair and unjust to bar employers from Federal contracts before they have exhausted all remedies of relief.

This amendment also provides unfair special treatment to employers with employees who are represented by a union. The amendment prohibitions can be waived if the employees of an employer are represented by a union, giving unionized Federal contractors a significant advantage over non-union firms in the Federal procurement process.

These prohibitions will encourage frivolous NLRA complaints and provide labor unions leverage to organize non-Federal union contractors. The Federal procurement process works best when the bidding process is open and fair and not dependent on whether the Federal contractor is unionized.

Mr. Speaker, this is in the best interest of taxpayers, and I urge my colleagues to reject this amendment.

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Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this amendment.

Mr. Speaker, this amendment has one goal: to eliminate all nonunion contractors from DOD contracts. It does not represent the modern workforce. The modern workforce is not interested in jurisdictional rules. They are interested in incentives to get the job done on time and on budget. It achieves this goal by favoring employers who want to do business with the DOD that sign neutrality agreements or already have collective bargaining agreements with labor unions.

These so-called neutrality agreements are anything but neutral. They stifle employee free choice and prohibit employers from communicating with their employees about the downsides of union representation.

Mr. Speaker, can you imagine an employer not being able to talk with their employees?

One common provision in a neutrality agreement takes away a worker's right to a secret ballot in an election. That is guaranteed in our elections and allows unions to organize under the radical card check scheme that exposes workers to well-documented instances of harassment and intimidation. Even the U.S. Supreme Court describes card check is an admittedly inferior election process.

Another provision in neutrality agreements places gag orders on employer speech that prohibits them from informing their employees about the impact that unionization can have on the workplace and their income.

This amendment could also put workers' private information at risk. Many neutrality agreements require employers to provide union access to employees' personal information including home address, phone numbers, and email addresses for the purpose of pressuring employees to sign U.N. authorization cards.

Workers should be able to freely choose for themselves whether they want a union through a secret ballot election. Instead, this amendment encourages employers to work with labor unions to impose union representation on workers. It is not the American way.

Hardworking taxpayers deserve efficient and effective procurement policies, not rules that provide preferential treatment to special interest groups like labor unions.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to reject this amendment.

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