As a new administration takes aim at weakening union power, unions must seek every advantage we have to protect the rights we've already won.
In 1787 as the nation’s founders were drafting the U.S. Constitution, a prominent Philadelphia socialite, Elizabeth Willing Powel, asked one of the primary authors, Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?" His famous answer was, “A Republic, madam, if you can keep it.” Despite their momentum, the founders knew how fragile the new union would be.
Today we face a similar question about the state of our labor unions. A new administration prepares to take the reins of the nation and their 920-page manifesto, “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise,” plainly details the many attacks that they plan to launch against unions.
Americans now approve of unions more than they ever have, but this momentum cannot be taken for granted. The authors of that manifesto aim to erase the gains we’ve made since the National Labor Relations Act started to level the professional playing field. Today Franklin might say, “You have a labor union, if you can keep it.”
Below are the plans that Project 2025 has for labor unions. Unions need to leverage every advantage to protect the rights that have already been won.
They Aim to Disallow Organizing
The manifesto is commonly referred to as “Project 2025,” named for the committee that wrote it. The authors want to prevent workers from organizing and keep negotiating power in the hands of management.
The proposed rules would allow corporations to deny unions by allowing a company to secretly hire union-busting consultants. These consultants will use scare tactics to squeeze workers who are trying to organize a union. Corporations will not be required to identify these consultants who will then operate as management spies in the workplace.
When employees attempt to organize, Project 2025 would allow corporations to punish the workers who are leading that drive. Today it’s illegal to fire a worker for trying to form a union. But Project 2025 states ways to make it easier to discipline or fire workers for engaging in collective action and organizing.
And even when workers successfully organize, Project 2025 would make it harder for employers to recognize a union when its workers have clearly stated in a majority vote that they want one. Workers would be forced to confirm their vote in a secret ballot which organizers say can and will be manipulated by the tactics stated above.
Unions enjoy the security of Project Labor Agreements (PLAs), contracts that state the terms and duration of a working agreement between labor and management. Now Project 2025 would give union-busting corporations the opportunity to fire a union even while workers are in the middle of a signed union contract.
And if all that anti-organizing hostility wasn’t enough, Project 2025 also allows management to sidestep national labor laws by creating their own phony employee organizations with fake employee committees hand-picked by management.
The changes proposed in Project 2025 – which are very likely to be acted upon by the new administration – are an assault against the rules that allow unions to form and prosper.
They Aim to Take Away Wages
Despite the fact that income disparity in America is at Gilded Age proportions, with wealthy corporate managers earning vast amounts more than the workers who produce the goods, Project 2025 disgustingly takes aim at the wages of employees.
The new agenda would allow states to obtain waivers from federal labor laws that protect workers’ paychecks and the right to join a union, putting Americans’ wages and benefits in a race to the bottom. It would also do away with overtime pay guarantees and allow employers to instead give employees time off for their overtime work—the employer controls when—resulting in less pay and no flexibility in schedules.
The new administration wants to repeal the requirements for federally-funded projects to operate under PLAs. Such agreements require that management pay workers the prevailing wage in the region. Eliminating PLAs will result in lower pay and more safety risks for workers.
They Aim to Overrule Safety and Child Labor Law
The manifesto also professes to create loopholes that will allow businesses to put worker safety at risk and to put children back to work on the assembly line. Their proposed agenda will let small businesses violate the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA’s) worker safety laws without punishment, no matter what deaths or injuries were caused by their negligence. It would also eliminate the child labor rules that protect teenagers from working in mines, meatpacking plants and other dangerous workplaces.
They Aim to Remove Worker Assurances
Project 2025 attacks the rights that protect workers in difficult times. The manifesto seeks to restrict unemployment insurance and make it harder for working families to access unemployment benefits. The plan also proposes to privatize unemployment insurance, which is currently managed by state departments of labor. This change would not only result in poorer unemployment services, it would also cause government workers to lose their jobs.
The federal government has provisions that offer training to workers whose jobs have been sent overseas from international trade. All of this training would be eliminated by Project 2025.
The changes proposed in Project 2025 – which are very likely to be acted upon by the new administration – are an assault against the rules that allow unions to form and prosper. Toward the end of his life, after America’s Constitution had been ratified, Benjamin Franklin wrote to a colleague, “Our new Constitution is now established, everything seems to promise it will be durable; but, in this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes.”
Which is precisely why unions must fight for their right to exist.
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