'The Party of Workers' shows lots of love for a national RTW bill but not for he PRO Act
By BERRY CRAIG
AFT and KEA/NEA retiree
“Can the G.O.P. Really Become the Party of Workers?” asked the New York Times headline.
The GOP has a golden opportunity to prove it can by supporting the reintroduced "Richard L. Trumka Protecting the Right to Organize Act," or PRO Act for short. Yet it’s plain the Republicans are still well-nigh unanimously against the most important pro-labor legislation since the New Deal.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., reintroduced the Pro Act in the Senate. Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., did likewise in the House.
Sanders is the ranking member of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. The Senate bill has 45 co-sponsors: 44 Democrats and one independent, Angus King of Maine. (Sanders and King caucus with the Democrats.)
Scott is the ranking member of the House Committee on Education & Workforce. The PRO Act has 219 House co-sponsors, including Kentucky Rep. Morgan McGarvey, a Louisville Democrat. Only one co-sponsor is a Republican.
The PRO Act would level the playing field between labor and management, expand workers' rights and, maybe most importantly, undermine union-busting state “right to work” laws, which are rooted in racism.
While Democrats are back with the PRO Act, Republicans are reprising their National Right to Work Act in the Senate and House. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., usually sponsors the union-busting bill. This time Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., has signed on with him. Once more, Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., is flying solo as sponsor of the House bill. Both RTW bills have multiple co-sponsors, all of them Republicans.
The GOP enjoys a Washington trifecta with Donald Trump's return to the presidency and with the world's richest man as as de facto co-president). A slim MAGA majority rules the House and Senate. But the Republicans have ample muscle to derail the PRO Act in both chambers.
The GOP's pet might pass the House. But in the Senate, the Red Team is seven votes shy of being able to break an expected Democratic filibuster.
"The PRO Act's reintroduction comes as U.S. President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk work to gut the federal government while congressional Republicans—who have narrow majorities in both chambers—work to cut healthcare and food assistance programs that serve working-class people to fund tax giveaways for the ultrawealthy and corporations," wrote Jessica Corbett in Common Dreams. "Sanders pointed to Trump's decision "to illegally fire National Labor Relations Board Member Gwynne Wilcox and effectively shut down the NLRB," and warned that "without a functioning NLRB, corporate bosses can illegally fire unionizing workers, flagrantly violate labor laws and render free and fair union elections near impossible."
She quoted Sanders: "Supporting the immediate reinstatement of Member Wilcox and the swift passage of the PRO Act would be major steps toward building real worker power. The PRO Act is long overdue and I am proud to be introducing this bill."
Even though the odds are undeniably against passage of the PRO Act, Democrats and organized labor would insist they're not just tilting at windmills.
"We know it won’t be easy, but the labor movement never backs down from a righteous fight," said AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler. "And in today’s economy, where our workers’ hard-earned paychecks are covering less of what they need while still facing unsafe conditions and a lack of respect on the job, there’s no fight more righteous than ensuring that every single worker who wants a union has a fair shot to join or form one."
Not surprisingly, a blog from the panel's Republican majority maligned the measure as “a radical bill that caters to union leaders and ignores the free-will of workers.” The blog also falsely claimed "the PRO Act would force workers into union contracts regardless of what a worker wants. Workers and employers would have their rights trampled.”
The blog concluded with stock GOP anti-union boilerplate: “Our economy would suffer greatly as a result, and workers would have fewer opportunities for successful careers while union leaders funnel worker paychecks into left-wing political advocacy. The PRO Act is bad for workers and bad for job creators.”
Anyway, when I taught history in a community college, I sometimes gave essay tests that asked students to compare and contrast historical figures, movements or events. It’s instructive to compare and contrast a press release from the Education & Workforce Committee Democrats and the Republican blog.
The release hailed the PRO Act as “a comprehensive proposal to protect workers’ right to come together and bargain for higher wages, better benefits, and safer workplaces.” Said Scott: “Unions are essential for building a strong middle class and improving the lives of workers and families. Regrettably, for too long, workers have suffered from anti-union attacks and toothless labor laws that undermined their right to form a union…As union approval remains at record highs, Congress has an urgent responsibility to ensure that workers can join a union and negotiate for higher pay, better benefits, and safer workplaces. The PRO Act is the most critical step Congress can take to uplift American workers. I urge my House and Senate colleagues on both sides of the aisle to join me in advancing the most significant update for workers’ labor organizing rights in over eighty years.”
The release also quoted Sanders: "Never before in the history of our nation have income and wealth inequality been greater than today. Workers are falling further and further behind. In response, millions of Americans have expressed their desire to join a union. However, the billionaire class is fighting with all its might to put down attempts by workers to exercise their constitutional right to unionize. That includes the decision by President Trump to illegally fire National Labor Relations Board Member Gwynne Wilcox and effectively shut down the NLRB. Without a functioning NLRB, corporate bosses can illegally fire unionizing workers, flagrantly violate labor laws and render free and fair union elections near impossible. Supporting the immediate reinstatement of Member Wilcox and the swift passage of the PRO Act would be major steps toward building real worker power. The PRO Act is long overdue, and I am proud to be introducing this bill in the Senate.”
Absent a slew of Republican Road-to-Damascus-like conversions, the PRO Act won't make it to Trump's desk. In his first term, he indicated he wouldn't sign the bill. There’s no indication Elon Musk’s co-president has changed his mind.
Trump was, and is again, the most anti-union president since the union-despising, greed-is-Godly GOP trio of Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover. (Ronald Reagan, the PATCO union-buster, runs Trump a close second.)
The Harding-Coolidge-Hoover only-Rich-Lives-Matter politics brought on the Great Depression.
So kudos to Scott and Sanders for forcing the GOP to show its hand again on the PRO Act, the most significant labor legislation since the Wagner Act of 1935, which was passed by a New Deal Democratic-majority Congress and inked by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who famously said, "If I went to work in a factory the first thing I'd do would be to join a union."
The first thing RTW fan Trump would do is become a scab.
"Which Side Are You On?" asks an old union song. Republican support for RTW and opposition to the PRO act is more proof, as if it were needed, that the Trump GOP is on the same side as its screw-the-unions forebears.
With the PRO Act, it’s put up or shut up for the purportedly born-again pro-labor MAGA Republican Party. Of course, the GOP will neither put up nor shut up, and their long-running con job on working people will keep rolling merrily along.