No on PRO

The Center joins a national effort to limit the power of U.S. labor unions.

American Experiment has joined a coalition of more than 60 organizations across the country that is urging Congress to defend American workers from union coercion. Led by Americans for Tax Reform, the coalition sent a letter to Congress opposing the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act.

The PRO Act, introduced earlier this year by Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) and Congressman Bobby Scott (D-VA 3rd District), puts the interests of big labor ahead of businesses, employees and taxpayers. Harmful provisions of the Act include codifying Obama-era rules and decisions that would put many employees and small businesses out of work and shorten the time frame of an election to unionize workers, which gives workers an inadequate amount of time to learn how unionization would affect them.

“Representatives who vote for this bill,” the letter said, “are simply helping labor union bosses, their campaign contributors, at the expense of American workers.”

The legislation would also force all private-sector workers to pay fees to labor unions whether they want to support them or not. This would deny First Amendment rights to these workers while lining unions’ pockets with dues money.

“The PRO Act is anything but proworker; it works against American workers in order to help labor union bosses,” said Catrin Wigfall, an American Experiment policy fellow. “This is not the first attempt congressional Democrats have made to hijack American labor law, and like those other attempts, this one should be soundly rejected too.”