The New Administration’s Goals Regarding Unionizing Under The Taft-Hartley Act – Employment and HR

Sen. Robert A. Taft, our agency’s namesake, launched
the Taft-Hartley Act within the Senate. The act was drafted by former
Taft accomplice, Mack Swigert, and handed in 1947. Due to this fact, we take
word of the Biden Administration’s targets to alter the principles
and norms enacted into legislation within the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, which
is the present Labor Administration Relations Act.

The brand new administration has expressed plans to alter a variety of
labor and employment guidelines, together with:

• Enhancing OSHA enforcement of violations inflicting or
  contributing to COVID-19 associated sickness at work.




• Permitting the NLRB to award again pay, entrance pay, and
  consequential and different damages to workers for unfair labor
  practices.




• Permitting unions and workers larger powers to strike.




• Requiring nonunion members in right-to-work states to pay a
  fair-share-fee to cowl collective bargaining prices.




• Permitting impartial contractors to discount collectively.




• Rising penalties for misclassifying workers.

So far, none of those adjustments have been handed into legislation.

One of many payments dedicated to strengthening unions and,
conversely, additional limiting an employer’s proper to guard
its means to function profitably throughout such efforts is the
Defending the Proper to Set up Act (PRO Act). The Home
reintroduced the PRO Act firstly of February 2021. A few of
the act’s options embrace: (a) broadening the definition of
employer to broaden the NLRA’s protection, (b) decreasing limits on
secondary boycotts, and (c) prohibiting employers from educating
their workers on the advantages and burdens of
organizing. 

We’ll concentrate on the secondary boycott problem. Presently, if a
union is conducting a picket exterior of a retail institution, for
instance, to tell the general public {that a} contractor employed by the
retailer is paying non-union, substandard wages to its staff, the
picket can not prohibit or forestall patrons from getting into the shop.
The brand new invoice would serve to additional prohibit employers from taking
measures to curb such secondary boycotts by the union so patrons
can simply entry their institutions throughout such a picket. This
is very related throughout a time when retailers are struggling
to encourage private visits to their institutions.

The PRO Act additionally addresses the standing of impartial
contractors-such as gig staff at ride-hailing and meals supply
companies-by reducing the bar for contractors to show they’re
workers beneath federal labor legislation. That will enable gig staff to
set up unions and protest retaliation beneath the NLRA-rights
at present assured solely to workers, not contractors.

Nonetheless, from a historic perspective, the PRO Act has little
probability of turning into legislation with out the elimination of the filibuster in
the Senate.

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