“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 that for for the fourth time, the Republicans are almost unanimously against the most important pro-labor legislation since the New Deal.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) introduced the Pro Act in the Senate. Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va) put it in the House hopper.
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.)
The House bill has 210 co-sponsors, including Kentucky Rep. Morgan McGarvey, a Louisville Democrat. Only two co-sponsors are Republicans.
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. With the passing of the old segregationist, white supremacist Southern Democrats, the GOP stands alone as the pro-RTW party.
While Democrats are back with the PRO Act, Republicans are reprising the 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-SC) is flying solo as sponsor House bill. Both RTW bills have co-sponsors, all Republicans.
The GOP enjoys enjoy a trifecta with Donald Trump back in the White House, while partnered with Elon Musk as de facto co-president. A slim MAGA majority rules the House and Senate. But the GOP has ample muscle to derail the PRO Act in both chambers.
Their RTW 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.
With steep odds against them, the Democrats and organized labor would insist they’re not just tilting at windmills with the PRO Act.
“We know it won’t be easy, but the labor movement never backs down from a righteous fight,” said AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, who added, “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.”
When I taught history in a community college, I gave essay tests that sometimes asked students to compare and contrast historical figures, movements, or events.
Scott is ranking member of the Education & Workforce panel. So it’s instructive to contrast the GOP blog with a press release from committee Democrats.
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 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 divine intervention, the PRO Act won’t make it to Trump’s desk. In his first term, he indicated he wouldn’t sign the bill if it did. There’s no indication Trump has changed his mind.
Trump was, and is again, the most anti-union president-ever, eclipsing PATCO union buster Ronald Reagan, and since the union-despising greed-is-Godly GOP trio of Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover. Their “Only Rich Lives Matter” politics brought on the Great Depression. In his first term, Trump promised to veto the PRO Act. There’s no indication Elon Musk’s co-president has changed his mind.
Anyway, kudos to Scott and Sanders for forcing the GOP to again show its hand on the PRO Act, the most significant labor legislation since the Wagner Act of 1935, 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 bust a union.
“Which Side Are You On?” asks an old union song. Republican support for RTW and opposition to the PRO Act is proof, as if it were needed, that “a new generation of Republicans” is on the same side as their forebears.
With the PRO Act, it’s put up or shut up time for the MAGA GOP. Of course, they’ll neither put up nor shut up, and their long-running con on working people will keep rolling merrily along.
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