In February, as he introduced the PRO Act to Congress for the third time, Senator Bob Menendez said the legislation “solidifies the transparency, freedom, and fairness all workers deserve in the workplace while also holding companies and executives accountable for violating their rights.” No mention was made of Congress holding unions accountable for the same, but hey, pigs still can’t fly, either.
The newly rebranded Richard L. Trumka Protecting the Right to Organize Act of 2023 has a snowball’s chance in hell of passage by the 118th Congress in its current form and was only introduced this year – as in prior years — to sell more tickets to the circus. But perhaps an amendment or two could bring much-needed balance to the Act. Here are a few suggestions:
- Beef up union oversight to better detect rigged elections and abuses of power before a union is driven off a cliff, perhaps a union with thousands of dues-paying members who deserve representation they can trust. Given the decade the once mighty UAW is having, this amendment is a no-brainer.
- Insert a new requirement that all paid salts report their salting activities to the DOL within two weeks of being ‘deployed’ to keep things transparent. Workers deserve to know if their impassioned, activist coworker/new best friend is a paid, trained, undercover agitator who won’t work a day in the unionized hellscapes left in their wake.
- And working people will surely benefit from “made whole” remedies for those pesky ‘Failure to Represent’ unfair labor practice charges some unions tend to attract, 530 in just the first three months of 2023. And in the name of fairness, the PRO Act should start holding unions accountable for clear cases of representational neglect and malpractice, like missed grievance deadlines. Under the current law, as long as the union operated “fairly, in good faith, and without discrimination,” they are off the hook no matter how much they muck something up. (Attention baristas – they may have to represent you, but they certainly aren’t currently required to represent you well. Ask any seasoned union member.)
During hearings on PRO Act ’23, Congressional champions of the downtrodden should also drag in a few union honchos to explain all the charges made by regular working folk against union officials who have used threats, intimidation, and/or physical violence to coerce members, typically to shut the hell up, vote the right way or stop asking so many questions. There were 210 such charges made in 2022 alone. Unfortunately, shining a light on union bullying would be an uncomfortable homage to Trumka, the former United Mine Workers president who never passed up an opportunity to incite others to bust heads and take names.
Indeed, the hard-working Amazon associates on Staten Island could use some protection from their union right about now. Their self-appointed union president has been busy consolidating power over the past six months in a manner that would make a Hoffa blush. (Documented here, here, here, here, and HERE.) Imagine where those 8,000 or so newly unionized Amazonians would be today had the PRO Act been signed into law in 2019…
Under the PRO Act, those currently represented by the Amazon Labor Union would already be under contract, and thus paying dues (or a slightly smaller representation fee) to a union currently being run like North Korea that less than a third of them actually voted for, if they were allowed to vote at all. They’d also likely be trapped under an imposed mediated two-year contract, as required by the PRO Act, that none of them got the chance to vote on, as everyone promised them they would. And because, under PRO Act guidelines, the mediator had to consider prevailing wages and other business factors, a mediated bargaining agreement could vary only slightly from Amazon’s current industry-leading compensation and benefits package. Ugh. That doesn’t seem free or fair at all.
So, to paraphrase Senator Menendez, let’s solidify the transparency, freedom, and fairness all workers deserve, whether a union represents them or not.
