On Tuesday, February 28, U.S. Representatives Bobby Scott (D-VA) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) announced the re-introduction of the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act.
The bill would rein in employer lawbreaking when workers are organizing a union and negotiating a first contract, with punitive fines for labor law violations. It would streamline union elections, make it harder for an employer to interfere in the election process, and ban “captive audience meetings,” in which employers force workers to listen to anti-union propaganda on work time.
The bill also undoes many critical elements of the 1947 Taft-Hartley bill which crippled the U.S. labor movement. It would essentially end the enforcement of “right-to-work” laws and make it possible for workers to use a wider range of tactics to pressure their employers. It also would make the permanent replacement of economic strikers illegal, restoring workers’ right to use the strike to hold their employers accountable.
The PRO Act passed the House of Representatives in March of 2021 with bipartisan support, but was not brought to a vote in the Senate. A poll released by the Worker Power Coalition in last fall showed robust bipartisan support for the PRO Act in so-called “battleground states.”
Delegates to UE’s 77th convention in 2021 demanded that Congress pass the PRO Act in the resolution “Labor Law Reform.”