Will House Vote to Make Workers Worse Off?
"If Big Labor succeeds in pushing the FLCA through the House, as expected, the Committee will go all out to stop it in the Senate.”
Big Labor’s GOP Appeasers Channel Barack Obama
Failed 16-Year-Old Union Power Grab Resuscitated by U.S. House
More than a decade-and-a-half ago, rabidly anti-Right to Work President Barack Obama and his Democrat cohorts in Congress concocted a scheme to pay back union bosses for their massive campaign support by dramatically increasing Big Labor’s coercive power over employees and businesses.
One key provision of a pro-forced unionism omnibus measure overhauling private-sector American labor relations proposed during Mr. Obama’s first term would have systematically denied unionized employees across the country a chance to vote on their binding contract terms.
Cynical Bid to Silence Workers’ Voices Failed to Get Vote During Obama Years
Public opposition to this cynical bid by union-label politicians to silence workers’ voices regarding their terms and conditions of employment was so intense it never even came up for a congressional floor vote during the Obama years.
Then-Big Labor Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) attempted to make empowering federal bureaucrats to forge union contracts a more palatable substitute for unpopular “card check” legislation, which would have routinized unionization of workplaces without a secret-ballot vote. But thanks largely to the efforts of Right to Work supporters across the country, this effort ultimately went nowhere.
Years later, the Harkin scheme was rolled into the so-called “PRO Act,” a package whose signature provision would have effectively repealed all existing state Right to Work laws and prevented any additional Right to Work laws from ever taking effect.
The PRO Act was rubber-stamped by the U.S. House in March 2021. Fortunately, again thanks in part to the National Right to Work Committee’s lobbying efforts, the PRO Act never made it through the then-Democrat-controlled Senate.
Faster Labor Contracts Act Moves Through U.S. House With Renegade GOP Support
In response, union bosses led by Teamster Union President Sean O’Brien decided to push for passage in the current Congress of several components of the PRO Act, instead of the whole thing, and market their rejiggered power grab as “bipartisan.”
The O’Brien ploy worked. On June 9, after seven House Republicans sided with the union brass, and its Democrat Party lackeys, and signed a discharge petition to force a vote on Mr. O’Brien’s brainchild — the so-called “Faster Labor Contracts Act” (H.R.5408/S.844), or FLCA — passed in the lower chamber.
The U.S. House voted 230-193 for the bill with every Democrat casting a ballot rubber-stamping it that evening.
“Discharge petition-signing GOP Reps. Don Bacon [Neb.], Rob Bresnahan [Pa.], Brian Fitzpatrick [Pa.], Nick LaLota [N.Y.], Mike Lawler [N.Y.], Max Miller [Ohio], and Riley Moore [W.Va.] blatantly snubbed the House GOP leadership to side with Big Labor Democrats and union bigwigs,” said Committee President Mark Mix.
“Under the FLCA, first introduced last year as S.844 by turncoat GOP Sen. Josh Hawley [Mo.], with the House version carried by Democrat Rep. Donald Norcross [N.J.], monopolistic union contracts would be imposed on employees and business owners after only 120 days of negotiation.
“At that point, federal bureaucrats could impose a contract on both the business and its workers. They would have no ability to appeal or file a protest for two years.
“Authorizing such heavy-handed state action with no opt-out is almost certainly unconstitutional, and the relevant FLCA provision was even decried by a union activist when the bill’s contents were discussed in a congressional committee hearing a few months ago.
“To top it all off, the agency that would oversee this mislabeled ‘arbitration’ process, the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service [FMCS], has a long record of wasteful and abusive spending that has been well documented by journalists for years. That’s why the Trump Administration put the FMCS into dormancy last year!”
Schemes to Advance FLCA And Other Big Labor Sops Undermine Trump Agenda
Mr. Mix continued: “Big Labor’s small group of GOP appeasers falsely claim to represent Donald Trump’s base. But the fact is that several of the President’s key accomplishments have advanced the Right to Work principle.
“During his first term, for example, Trump-appointed Justice Neil Gorsuch cast the deciding Supreme Court vote in the Right to Work-won Janus case, which barred forced union dues and fees as a condition of public employment in all 50 states. In his current term, Mr. Trump has signed executive orders suspending most federal-sector union bosses’ monopoly bargaining privileges.
“The handful of House Republicans who have sided with federal union kingpins against the White House aren’t Trump supporters or ‘populists.’ They’re Big Labor appeasers, plain and simple.
“Members of this renegade cabal also helped kill the Save Local Business Act [H.R.4366] in January.
“This much-needed reform would have put a permanent halt to schemes launched during the Obama and Biden Administrations to make it even easier for Big Labor to corral employees into unions by redefining what a ‘joint employer’ is under federal labor law.
“With regard to the FLCA itself, President Trump saw the waste and abuse of taxpayer dollars in the FMCS last year and all but shut it down. Now weak-kneed Republican senators and congressmen want to revive and resuscitate the FMCS, once more against the President’s expressed legal order.”
Efforts to Stop FLCA In the Senate Underway
So far, despite the recurring efforts to undermine the President’s agenda in the House, supporters of the Right to Work movement have been able to thwart Big Labor and its GOP fellow travelers in the Senate.
“Every time these renegades think they have made headway in the House, they confront a Senate whose leadership and rules still prevent half-cocked ideas and anti-Right to Work legislation like the FLCA from advancing,” said Mr. Mix.
“Several members of the Senate leadership and the relevant committees still understand how important it is to support the Trump agenda in the sphere of labor-management relations.
“More importantly, they know that the Committee’s 2.8 million members and supporters stand at the ready to be engaged in case the FLCA, or any other pro-union monopoly legislation, lands on the Senate floor.
“Our staff on Capitol Hill is already reminding key senators of pledges they have made to support Right to Work and employee freedom, and vote against forced unionism, and how the repercussions for reneging will be severe.
“No violation of such a pledge will go unanswered. The Committee and its membership will see to that.”
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