Thread by @josheidelson

New sweeping labor law reform bill introduced today by House & Senate Dems would:

Ban
- right-to-work laws
- permanent replacement of strikers
- mandatory "captive audience" meetings
- forced arbitration

& legalize

- secondary picketing/strikes
- intermittent strikes

&also...

- broaden definition of employee, like CA's "ABC" test
- let NLRB assess damages & hold company officials personally liable for violations
- let workers bring civil lawsuits over labor law violations in court
- require arbitration if deal isn't reached on first contract
& also...

- force companies to recognize a union based on majority of workers having signed union cards ("card-check") *if* illegal interference by management prevented union from winning an election
Sponsored by 40 senators including Sanders, Warren, Harris, Booker, Gillibrand, Klobuchar

New bill is called the PRO Act. Many of these provisions (and others, like a less-conditional card-check rule) are also in Workplace Democracy Act introduced last year by Bernie Sanders & co-sponsored by Warren, Harris, Booker, Gillibrand et al bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

In short, this proposal would substantially broaden workers' right to strike, broaden workers' right to unionize, and expand workers' and governments' tools for addressing and punishing illegal union-busting.

This legislation is backed by 100 House members & 40 Senators, including Pelosi, Schumer as well as most current lawmakers running for president.

Reflects trends in labor law thinking among some union & Dem leaders
- Desire to try a bunch of stuff, not silver bullet
- Ambivalence about if card-check worth fight
- Post-EFCA, desire to show reform not just about unions
- Post-2016, desire to be explicit it would boost unions

For those wondering how this compares to the Employee Free Choice Act that died early in Obama presidency, this new proposal has 2.5 of EFCA's 3 pillars- first-contract arbitration, tougher damages for violations, and a more conditional form of card-check - plus slew of new stuff

Another observation about this new sweeping labor law reform proposal from Dems: Its changes, while major, are largely about building on or restoring aspects of original 1935 structure of the National Labor Relations Act (before court rulings and Taft-Hartley), not replacing it.

For example, this bill doesn't move to industrywide bargaining or standards-setting of sort SEIU has urged (bloomberg.com/news/articles/…), or make bosses recognize "non-majority unions." But it'd undo decades of changes like green-lighting of "permanent replacement" & "right-to-work."