Issues
Labor Law Reform:
While there has yet to be labor law reform legislation introduced in the current 112th Congress, The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), H.R. 1409 and S. 560, was highly popular during the 111th Congress. Both of these bills garnered significant support in the last session of Congress, with H.R. 1409 boasting 231 House cosponsors and S. 560 having 40 Senate supporters. However, despite stagnant and, in some cases declining worker salaries in an era of steep worker productivity increases, neither EFCA, nor any other labor law reform was passed by the last Congress.
According to a 2010 Economic Policy Institute (EPI) briefing paper, Recession Hits Workers Paychecks, Wage Growth Has Collapsed, “both hourly and weekly wage growth has slowed substantially for a broad array of workers,” and “the failure of workers’ wages and living standards to be closely linked to productivity growth has been evident for roughly 35 years.”
EPI argues that one of the primary initiatives national policy makers could implement to help address the long-term disconnect between wages and productivity is by “reestablishing a robust system of collective bargaining, thus increasing labor’s influence in the effort to ensure that the wealth of the country is broadly shared.” So, by bringing equity to our private sector labor laws we will not only be leveling the playing field for workers who want to pursue collective bargaining, we will also be rebuilding our middle class by increasing worker wages. See the 112th Congressional IFPTE issue brief for this issue here.