IFPTE Call's on Representatives to Pass PRO Act Ahead of Vote in House This Week
This week , the House of Representatives will vote on one of highest and longest held priorities for the U.S. labor movement: private sector labor law reform.
The Protecting the Right to Organize Act, H.R. 842., (PRO Act) is a sponsored by House Education and Labor Chair Bobby Scott (D-VA) and has bipartisan support in the House. The bill restores the original intent of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (NLRA) and levels the playing field between workers who want to form unions and employers who exploit weaknesses in the current law to frustrate union organizing drives and interfere with workers’ legal rights to organize and bargain collectively.
The legislation proposes a comprehensive approach to ensuring workers have a fair and democratic opportunity to choose to form and join a union and bargain collectively. IFPTE’s outreach to Congress has emphasized that the remedies in the PRO Act would directly address so many of the cohesive actions and delaying tactics that employers utilize against workers, including workers organizing and voting to form unions with IFPTE. This week’s letter on the PRO Act includes an account of the employer’s anti-union campaign against ALDF United, an NPEU-IFPTE Local 70 organizing campaign led by nonprofit professionals at the Animal Legal Defense Fund.
IFPTE also urged the inclusion of Rep. Andy Levin’s (D-MI) SAFE Workers Act in the PRO Act, legislation endorsed by IFPTE to allow the National Labor Relations Board to conduct electronic elections.
IFPTE anticipates the public sector labor reform for state, county, and municipal government employees, the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act, sponsored in the last Congress by Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-PA) with bipartisan support, will be introduced later this year.
Read IFPTE’s letter to the House on passing the PRO Act here.
UPDATE: The PRO Act was passed by the House by a bipartisan majority, with 220 votes in favor. The Senate has yet to vote on this bill. See how your Representative voted here.