Union Bosses’ Paychecks are Not Infrastructure
What’s at stake if the PRO Act is incorporated in the Senate “infrastructure” plan
The PRO Act is a dangerous step backward for the American workforce.
That’s why Democrats are subverting the people’s will by considering this payoff for union bosses as part of their so-called “infrastructure” proposal.
The Senate Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions Committee is meeting today to promote this radical legislation, a precursor to their potential fight to include it in Biden’s latest spending spree.
Democrats hide behind misleading titles and idyllic promises in hopes that you won’t unmask their anti-worker crusade. Here’s what they aren’t telling you about the PRO Union Bosses Act:
It will overturn right-to-work laws.
Overturning popular state right-to-work laws will force workers to pay millions of dollars from their hard-earned paychecks to labor unions as a condition of their employment. From 2010 to 2018, unions sent more than $1.6 billion in member dues — money intended for collective bargaining and worker representation — to hundreds of left-wing groups such as Planned Parenthood, the Clinton Foundation, and the Progressive Democrats of America.
It is both wrong and corrupt to use workers’ dollars to advance a far-left agenda without their consent.
It will kill the small business franchise industry and sharing economy as we know them.
The PRO Act deprives individuals of entrepreneurial opportunities, the ability to set their own hours, and the flexibility to care for children and family members during the pandemic by creating burdensome and discredited legal standards for determining joint employment and independent contractor status.
During the pandemic, the independent contractor industry boomed, particularly for women and minorities, in response to rampant unemployment and newfound need for flexible work opportunities. Removing these pathways to success jeopardizes an entire entrepreneurial, forward-looking sector of the American economy.
It will subject workers to outside interference and coercion.
Under this bill, union elections may be held at locations other than the business being organized, making the elections more susceptible to outside interference, coercion, and meddling.
Further, the bill takes away workers’ right to vote by secret ballot in many circumstances by imposing a biased “card-check” scheme in which workers could be unionized without the union winning a secret ballot election. Every Congressional Democrat is elected by secret ballot, yet they are trying to take that right away from workers.
It will infringe on workers’ rights to privacy.
As if denying workers the right to a secret ballot wasn’t enough, the PRO Act will require employers to hand over workers’ private, personal information to union organizers, including home addresses, cellphone and landline numbers, personal email addresses, and more, without the consent of workers.
This egregious overstep of both federal and union power will subject workers to well-documented instances of harassment, intimidation, and deceit from union organizers.
It will facilitate union corruption and wrongdoing.
The PRO Act makes union bosses more powerful without holding them accountable to the workers they serve, increasing the risk of union corruption and wrongdoing.
A recently concluded federal probe uncovered more than a decade of rampant corruption among the senior ranks of the United Auto Workers union, including money laundering, tax fraud, bribery, and embezzling workers’ hard-earned union dues for lavish personal expenses. The PRO Act will increase — not decrease — instances of corruption like these, where union bosses abuse the essentially unchecked power the PRO Act grants them.
Absolute power corrupts, absolutely. The PRO Act will take power from the people and give it to union bosses, who are infiltrating the Biden administration at every level to advance their anti-worker agenda.
We cannot let that happen.
