Congress Must Oppose Big Labor’s “PRO Act” Power Grab

Congressional Democrats have reintroduced the so-called “Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act,” a bloated grab-bag of policies that empower labor union bosses at the expense of workers. Americans for Tax Reform urges all members of Congress to oppose the PRO Act.

Congressman Bobby Scott (D-Va.) introduced the PRO Act in the House last week as H.R. 20 alongside 207 of his Democratic colleagues. Just two Republicans, Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) and Chris Smith (R-N.J.), cosponsored the bill. Only six Democrats in the House have chosen not to endorse the bill.

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was joined by 45 of his Democratic colleagues on the Senate version of the PRO Act. Senator Mark Warner (D-Va.) was the only Democrat to not cosponsor the bill. Zero Republican Senators have cosponsored the PRO Act.

The PRO Act is a gift from Democrats to union bosses and would violate many of the rights and freedoms enjoyed by workers today. If passed, the PRO Act would:

• Eliminate Right to Work laws across the country, which protect 160 million Americans in 26 states. Right to Work laws prevent employers from being able to force workers to join a union as a condition of employment. If Right to Work laws were banned, every American worker would be forced to choose between paying a union boss and putting food on the table.
• Forcibly reclassify independent contractors as W-2 employees, even if a worker wants to remain independent. The PRO Act builds off of California’s failed “ABC test,” a vague three-factor test that resulted in the reclassification of independent contractors into employment status against their will. Bringing this policy to the federal level would jeopardize the livelihoods of the more than 70 million Americans that engage in freelance work.
• Codify an expanded joint employer standard, which would increase liability for businesses and cause widespread economic harm. If implemented, this change to longstanding labor law precedent would decimate the franchise model which employs more than 8 million Americans. When President Biden attempted to implement this standard through executive fiat, the courts struck it down as illegal.
• Change union elections to allow union bosses to collect cards from workers to demonstrate support for the union, rather than holding a secret ballot election. If labor bosses fail to unionize a workplace via a secret ballot election, the union can appeal to the NLRB for a second chance to unionize the workplace.
• Violate worker privacy by forcing employers to give sensitive employee contact information to union organizers, including names, home addresses, cell phone numbers, home phone numbers, personal email addresses, work locations, job classifications, and shift schedules. This would allow union bosses to intimidate workers into joining unions at homes or workplaces.

In addition to violating worker choice, the PRO Act comes with hefty costs. A study commissioned by Americans for Tax Reform and the Tholos Foundation in 2022 found that reclassifying independent workers under a national ABC test would result in 7.7 million workers paying higher taxes. Other studies have suggested that an earlier version of the PRO Act’s joint employer standard cost franchise businesses more than $33 billion per year, resulting in 376,000 fewer job opportunities. Another provision of the PRO Act that restricts employers from replacing strikers permanently could cost employers an additional $1.9 billion every year, according to an estimate by American Action Forum.

In the 2024 election cycle, labor unions gave nearly 90 percent of their political donations to Democratic Party candidates. For large unions like the National Education Association (NEA), as much as 99 percent of political donations went to Democrats. The PRO Act is a return on investment for the hundreds of millions of dollars that union bosses continue to pour into Democrat coffers.

Members of Congress should stand adamantly opposed to the PRO Act and the harms it poses to American workers.