Two More Senators Cave to Big Labor Bosses

So-Called ‘PRO’ Act Power Grab Draws Closer to Final Passage

Top union bosses are now dangerously close to securing majority support in the U.S. Senate for a radical scheme that would empower Big Labor to force millions and millions of additional employees to accept union monopoly bargaining and pay forced union fees to keep their jobs.

In April, two of the five Democrat senators who had held out until then from cosponsoring S.420, the cynically mislabeled “Protecting the Right to Organize” Act (or “PRO” Act), submitted to pressure from union lobbyists and their allies to sign on to this dangerous, destructive legislation. 

The core provision of S.420 would insert language in federal labor law that renders Section 14(b) of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) worthless.

By a Six-to-One Margin, Americans Favor ‘Complete Choice’ in Backing a Union

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, 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  Right to Work laws across the country.

While the anti-Right to Work clause in the “PRO” Act is far from its only objectionable provision, it alone would suffice to make this omnibus bill extremely unpopular with the American people. 

According to a scientific nationwide October 2017 poll conducted by the Reston, Va.-based firm Heart & Mind Strategies, Americans 18 and older overwhelmingly support the Right to Work principle that the individual employee should have “complete choice in joining or financially supporting a union” — by a six-to-one margin! 

Union Bosses Now Just Three Cosponsors Away From Securing Senate Floor Vote

Big Labor strategists are calculating that politicians who are desperate to continue benefiting from the estimated $2 billion or more per election year the union hierarchy can pour into politics and lobbying because of its monopoly privileges will grant S.420 rubber-stamp approval anyway.

And so far those expectations are being borne out.

On March 9, the U.S. House green-lighted S.420’s companion legislation in that chamber, H.R.842, by a 225-206 margin, without holding hearings or accepting written testimony.

And in the Senate, S.420 is now sponsored or cosponsored by 47 members, just three shy of half the chamber. 

Once Big Labor lobbyists hit that mark, union-label Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) has publicly promised to bring S.420 to the floor for a vote.

New York City-Based Socialist Group Takes Credit For Swaying Senators

And with 50 senators signed on, union bigwigs will actually have majority support in the chamber, whenever Big Labor Democrat Vice President Kamala Harris is available to break a 50-50 tie.

After S.420 was introduced by forced-unionism cheerleader Patty Murray (D-Wash.) on February 24, with 44 original cosponsors, Big Labor largely farmed out the lobbying campaign to ensure this anti-worker scheme becomes law to the New York City-based Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). 

With 92,000 members as of January, the best known of whom are radical Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the DSA is the largest socialist organization in the country.

The complete abolition of the free-market economy is the DSA’s avowed goal.

According to an April 12 report for the Intercept by journalist Ryan Grim, the DSA and its union-boss partners had by that time already orchestrated at least 500,000 phone calls into the offices of the five Democrat senators who were still sitting on the fence with regard to S.420 at that time. 

After Sens. Angus King of Maine (an Independent who caucuses with Democrat politicians) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) caved in over the course of the next few days and declared their support for the Pushbutton-Unionism Bill, DSA leaders proudly took the credit.

‘Completely Appropriate’ That a Marxist Group Is Lobbying For S.420/H.R.842

Committee Lobbying Against So-Called ‘Nuclear Option’ As Well as S.420/H.R.842

Fortunately, under current Senate rules, 41 or more pro-Right to Work senators can still, with freedom-loving Americans’ backing, sustain a debate blocking final floor passage of the Pushbutton-Unionism Bill until an alerted American public can defeat it directly. 

That would prevent the socialist-union boss alliance from ramming this radical legislation through the Senate with just 51 votes.

Unfortunately, if that happens, Majority Leader Schumer is threatening to deploy the so-called “nuclear option” to set aside Senate rules so that pro-Right to Work senators can be prevented from conducting such extended debates, commonly called “filibusters.”

Mr. Mourad pledged that the Right to Work Committee will continue mobilizing members and supporters throughout the country to put the pressure on their senators not to eliminate extended debates in the Senate this year or in 2022. 

“Every senator,” he said, “especially vulnerable, fence-sitting senators from Right to Work states, must be on notice that a vote for Chuck Schumer’s ‘nuclear option’ scheme is a vote to foist compulsory union dues and fees on independent-minded workers nationwide.”

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