Joe Biden’s ‘Infrastructure’ Bait-and-Switch

Right to Work Mobilizes Resistance to Big Labor Payoff

Less than six months into his presidency, lifelong Big Labor politician Joe Biden faces intensifying public opposition to his current top legislative objective, the cynically mislabeled “American Jobs Plan.” 

President Biden and his media enablers are touting the second multi-trillion-dollar spending push of his young administration as a plan to “rebuild America’s crumbling infrastructure.” 

But the primary aim of the “American Jobs Plan” is clearly not to repair and upgrade America’s roads, highways, bridges, water ports and airports, but rather to benefit powerful union officials who helped install Mr. Biden in the White House.

The real purpose of this Biden scheme is illustrated by the President’s public insistence, again and again, that the so-called “Protecting the Right to Organize” Act, or “PRO” Act, be part of any “infrastructure” legislation advanced by union-label Democrats on Capitol Hill. 

Sticking ‘PRO’ Act Into ‘Infrastructure’ Package Is Now ‘the Top Priority’

The core provision of the “PRO” Act (S.420/H.R.842) would insert language in federal labor law that renders Section 14(b) of the “Taft-Hartley Act” worthless.

Since 1947, Section 14(b) has explicitly recognized that states have the authority to protect employees from being corralled into a labor organization, even though federal law imposes forced unionism across the country.

But S.420/H.R.842, aptly labeled as the Pushbutton-Unionism Bill, states that the extraction of forced fees from employees for union monopoly bargaining, regardless of whether it benefits or hurts them personally, shall be “valid,” notwithstanding “any State or Territorial law.”

In simple terms, it repeals all state Right to Work laws across the country.

Given that, from 2010-20, the total number of people employed in states that protected employees’ Right to Work throughout the last decade grew nearly five times as fast as in states that still lack Right to Work protections today, S.420/ H.R.842 would surely depress — not stimulate — the economy.

Nevertheless, as Roll Call recently reported, citing union-label Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), sticking the Pushbutton- Unionism Bill’s provisions “into an infrastructure package” putatively intended to “stimulate” the U.S. economy is “the top priority right now.”

‘Not a Smart or Efficient Way to Spend Taxpayers’ Money’

Even if the Biden Administration’s so-called “jobs plan” weren’t being coupled with the job-destroying, anti-Right to Work Pushbutton-Unionism Bill, it would still be a terrible deal for independent-minded hardhats and their employers as well as for taxpayers and consumers across the U.S.

National Right to Work Committee President Mark Mix commented:

“President Biden wants to pour additional hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars into ‘public works,’ broadly defined, over the next few years.

“As a consequence of the 1931 Davis-Bacon Act and other federal policies that put union-free hardhats at a gross disadvantage in competing for federally funded contracts, this massive cash infusion would empower Big Labor to seize monopoly control over a much larger share of building-trades jobs.

“Of course, effectively limiting federal public works projects to politically connected unionized firms at the expense of the roughly 87% of American hardhats who have chosen to accept a job with an independent construction company is not a smart or efficient way to spend taxpayers’ money.” 

Big Public-Works Spending + Biased Federal Labor Policies Reward Crooked Union Bosses

“In fact,” added Mr. Mix, “there is ample reason to expect the Biden infusion of hundreds of billions of additional taxpayer dollars into transportation-related construction projects will actually fuel Big Labor corruption in the same way embattled Gov. Andrew Cuomo [D] has done in the Empire State.

“Just last October, plumbers union boss James Cahill, then the president of the 200,000-member New York State Building and Construction Trades Council [NYSBCTC], and 10 of his lieutenants were indicted on charges related to their alleged receipt of bribes from contractors in exchange for bid-rigging.

“The fact is, big public works spending, combined with Davis-Bacon and government-promoted union-only ‘project labor agreements,’ is a boon for unscrupulous men like Mr. Cahill.

“It makes them ‘the ultimate power brokers, controlling numerous jobs and commanding the loyalty of countless beneficiaries down the line,’ as Kevin Barry, himself the director of a small construction union in Queens, explained in an op-ed published a couple of weeks after the NYSBCTC indictments.”

Right to Work Members Urged to Petition Their U.S. Representatives, Senators 

Most National Right to Work members across the country who receive the Committee Newsletter through the U.S. Mail will find, together in the envelope with this month’s edition, a letter from Mr. Mix urging them to let their U.S. representatives and senators know where they stand.

Also included in this month’s Newsletter mailing are congressional petitions to sign and return.

“With an ‘infrastructure’ package featuring destruction of state Right to Work laws expected to reach the floor of first the House and then the Senate this summer, the Committee is preparing to flood Capitol Hill with phone calls, emails, text messages, and letters as well as petitions,” said Mr. Mix.

“Public opinion is strongly on our side, as documented by decades of scientific polling.

“For example, a nationwide 2017 survey conducted by the Reston, Va.-based firm Heart & Mind Strategies found that Americans 18 and up overwhelmingly support the Right to Work principle that the individual employee should have ‘complete choice in joining or financially supporting a union.’

“In fact, they support this principle by a six-to-one margin!

“On the other hand, President Biden has in his court House Speaker Nancy Pelosi [D-Calif.] and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer [D-N.Y.], who are just as determined to expand Big Labor’s special privileges as he is.

“And no one should expect the President to back away from his avowed position that the Pushbutton-Unionism Bill’s provisions must be made part of any ‘infrastructure’ scheme that makes it to the House or Senate floor.

“As Mr. Biden himself effectively admitted on a visit this spring to Right to Work Michigan, he has no interest in supporting policies that spur job creation unless they are ‘union jobs.’

“‘I’m a union President,’ he declared. ‘Make no bones about it.’

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This article was originally published in our monthly newsletter. You can go here to access previous newsletter posts.

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