GOP Sen. Josh Hawley's Anti-Worker "Framework" To Appease Unions
By injecting the government further into labor relations, the GOP Senator's proposals are more pro-union than they are pro-worker.
Opinion by Peter List, Editor | January 28, 2025
If the workers surrender control over working relations to legislative and administrative agents, they put their industrial liberty at the disposal of state agents. — Samuel Gompers, 1915
From what I’ve seen of him in past social media clips, I’ve tended to like U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO). He seemed like one of the few honest politicians in Washington, D.C., and it often appeared, for the most part, that his heart was in the right place.
So, why is Josh Hawley trying to do unions’ bidding by putting the federal government even deeper into the middle of labor relations, while taking away workers’ rights in the process?
On the heels of his flip-flopping over Right-to-Work laws, is it, as one retired Teamster wrote last year, “shameless, phony political theater,” or is he merely getting lousy advice?
Recently, OnLabor (a blog “devoted to workers, unions, and their politics”) published a piece about Senator Hawley calling for a “Pro-Worker Framework For the 119th Congress.”
His proposal appears to be a mishmash of several problematic ideas in the labor movement’s legislative Holy Grail, the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, or PRO Act. Similar to the PRO Act, the issue with Senator Hawley’s “Framework” is that it is not pro-worker but pro-union. There is a distinction.
Indeed, like the PRO Act, Hawley’s proposal is built on misguided ideas, some of which stem from flawed premises; one might even argue that, like the PRO Act, Hawley’s proposals are anti-worker.
Here is Hawley’s “Framework,” as published:
Here’s why:
In his document (above), Hawley proposes several items to reform labor law, which can be summarized as follows:
1. Requiring employers to post NLRB notices.
While the desire to require employers to ‘affirmatively’ post National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) notices of employee rights has gone back and forth for more than a decade, employers are already required to post notices, which include workers’ rights, when a union has filed for an election under the NLRB.
However, Hawley proposes having NLRB posters mandated to be posted at all times in the workplace. While there are legal arguments on this issue, in and of itself, it is not as important as some believe. Most workers typically do not read employee rights posters and, often, only do so to pass the time while standing at a time clock.
2. Prohibiting ‘unsafe work speed quotas and other corporate policies…’
Why is Hawley targeting Amazon and not UPS or USPS? In his policy ‘framework,’ without directly saying it, Hawley seems to be targeting Amazon when referring to large corporations “like Amazon” for being unsafe.
As many know, despite competitive wages and benefits (which, until the 2023 contract, exceeded UPS’ warehouse wages), Amazon is a large target for unionization by the Teamsters and other unions. However, if Hawley is targeting Amazon for being “unsafe,” he and his staff may not have done their homework.
In a 2023 Report (in PDF) issued by the Subcommittee on Workforce Protections Hearing, OSHA data revealed that Amazon—which, at 740,000 workers in the U.S., has more than twice the number of employees as unionized United Parcel Service (UPS)—appears to have a better safety record than UPS, as well as the United States Post Office (USPS), which is also unionized.
Per the House Subcommittee report:
The number of OSHA inspections per company (p.10):
On the question of ‘what percentage of inspections resulted in one or more citations for violations…’ (p.11), Amazon was the lowest of all the employers listed.
Unionized UPS had 71 percent more citations than Amazon, and the unionized USPS had 150 percent more citations than Amazon.
By OSHA’s data, it appears that Amazon has the lowest percentage of OSHA citations per inspection among all the employers listed—non-union and unionized.
3. Making union elections ‘fair and timely’
Union elections is another area that Hawley appears to be getting bad information, as his “framework” calls for “requiring a timely vote in less than 20 business days.”
Notwithstanding the fact that unions would rather end secret-ballot elections entirely through ‘card check’ (or ‘backdoor card check’ via the Cemex doctrine), unions already win an overwhelming majority of secret-ballot elections now.
Although, according to National Labor Relations Board data (in Excel), unions won nearly 80 percent (78.1) of union certification elections (RC) in FY2024 (94.1% just last week), Hawley’s proposal to shorten the timeframe to “less than 20 business days”—given the unions’ already extraordinarily-high win rate—is unwarranted. It is also a disservice to workers who, in many cases, have been bombarded with pro-union/anti-employer messaging for weeks or months. Lastly, shortening the election timeframe could further complicate bargaining if a bargaining unit has contested job classifications.
They’re called ambush elections for a reason. Unions have weeks and months to campaign against employers to convince their workers to unionize. Often, union campaigns are conducted by stealth, and by the time an employer is even made aware of it, the union has already convinced most workers that a union is needed.
Until the COVID 19 shutdowns, the median time from an NLRB election petition to an NLRB-conducted election was 24 days. Although it went up briefly in 2020, unless there are issues over the appropriateness of the proposed voting units, most elections today occur within four to five weeks anyway.
Union promises. More importantly—as unions are legally allowed to make actual or implied promises to workers (or to mislead them) without penalty over lengthy periods of time—shortened elections leave employers with little time to a) find out what has been promised (employers are not allowed to ask) and b) educate workers about the facts of collective bargaining (e.g., that union promises are not guarantees).
Unions also often deploy union “salts” (underground union organizers) to infiltrate non-union workplaces and convince workers to unionize—tricking both the employer and, more importantly, the workers as to their true motives.
4. Supporting Initial Union Contracts
In his “Framework” document, Senator Hawley proposes that “after workers have voted to join the union, the employer and union must begin negotiating within 10 days and execute their agreements within months, not years.”
This portion of Hawley’s proposal exhibits extreme naiveté on negotiating a first contract, as well as a demonstrable stripping away of employer rights and, more importantly, worker rights.
Within 10 days? When a union is voted into a workplace, there is a certification period in which election objections can be filed with the NLRB. Does Hawley intend to do away with this?
Practically speaking, Hawley’s proposal to shorten the process is impractical. Presuming an election is certified, unions often meet with their newly-unionized constituency to determine what to ask for in negotiations. This means setting up a time and meeting place to hold a union meeting for workers to attend—or, in the alternative, sending out bargaining surveys and collecting the data to determine bargaining proposals. All of this takes time—usually weeks. Does Hawley intend for workers not to be able to have input into the bargaining process?
After unionization, unions also have the right to request information from the employer. As unions typically do not receive accurate information from workers they are trying to unionize as to the wages and benefits data, job descriptions, and the like, unions usually will send a formal request to the newly unionized employer, which the employer must respond to. Employers also have the lawful right to request information from the union. This exchange of information does not occur “overnight” and will often take more than 10 days for the back and forth.
Additionally, and (depending on his legislative “solution”) the most potentially repugnant part of Hawleys proposal is the putting the time limit (“within months”) to execute a contract.
Or what? What does Hawley propose to do if a contract cannot be reached “within months?”
Writing first-time contracts is one of the most laborious parts of labor relations. It is akin to re-writing the entire employment relationship. Each party (the employer, the union, and the employees) has their own ‘institutional’ needs and desires. However, it is not the wages and benefits that take so much time it, is the “language” of the agreement.
Take, for example, this current case of negotiating the difficulties in negotiating whether ‘DEI’ language into a contract.
The union’s anti-discrimination proposal was 900 words, while they claim the Guthrie's reduced it to 200. This includes language protecting accessibility, and anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policies.
So, if the parties can’t agree on a contract, what does Senator Hawley propose?
Does Hawley, as the unions have wanted for the last 15 years, want the government to dictate what employers pay their workers?
While the National Labor Relations Act requires an employer and a union to bargain in good faith, the law does not require either party to agree.
“The obligation does not, however, compel either party to agree to a proposal by the other, nor does it require either party to make a concession to the other."[Source: NLRB’s Basic Guide to the National Labor Relations Act.]
Under federal law, employers and unions have never been forced to agree with one another, which is why there are such things as labor disputes (i.e. strikes).
Unions, since the mid-2000s, have tried to pass laws (first, the Employee Free Choice Act [EFCA] and, more recently, the Protecting the Right to Organize Act [the PRO Act]) that put government-mandated arbitrators into the position of dictating what goes into a union’s contract with an employer.
If implemented, this means:
The government will dictate an employer’s wages and benefits through an arbitrator who does not have to live with the consequences. In a quasi-free market economy, this would be a dangerous precedent to set. If the employer cannot afford it, it can either break the contract (under presumed government penalty) or go out of business.
Since a government-backed arbitrator would mandate a contract, what happens to workers having a voice? Workers would not need to vote to either ratify or reject a contract since it is mandated. If they do not like the imposed contract, will workers even have the right to strike? Or, as with EFCA and PRO Act advocates, does Senator Hawley intend to remove the workers’ right to strike too?
5. Boosting Penalties for Unfair Treatment
As with prior efforts in EFCA and the PRO Act, Hawley’s proposals include providing fines for violating the law.
While this has long been a goal of unions and pro-union advocates for labor law reform, it should come with a review of how the politically-appointed NLRB makes its decisions.
As R. Pepper Crutcher, Jr. wrote for the Federalist Society last year:
“…DOJ’s proof burden is higher, but another big factor is how testimonial disputes are resolved. In most DOJ ‘regulatory offense’ trials, jurors make credibility judgments. The NLRB assigns that task to its ALJs and defers to their assessments using a boilerplate footnote to dismiss Respondent objections. Consequently, few ALJ decisions receive anything resembling de novo review, except when the Board decides to change the applicable law. When Respondents seek judicial review of Board decisions, the Board claims subject matter expertise, invokes Chevron, and typically receives deference to its deference.”
To take the matter further, Hawley proposes that “workers who are subjected to unfair labor practices will also receive more substantial compensation and have the ability to seek redress in court if the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) fails to bring suit.”
While it’s unknown whether this would apply to both employers and unions, what is clear is that whoever the respondent is, under this proposal, the respondent would be required to defend itself not once but twice.
‘You can’t ride two horses with one a*s.’
If Senator Hawley wants to put proposals like his ‘framework.’ forward, he should at least be more forthright about it.
These are pro-union proposals. However, they are not pro-worker. They could, in fact, be considered anti-worker.
As a good friend (now deceased)—who also happened to be a former Teamster leader—used to say: “You can’t ride two horses with one a*s.”
Again, Senator Hawley seems like one of the few honest politicians in Washington, D.C. However, on this issue, it appears he is either way over his skis, or he is just getting lousy advice.
A note to Senator Hawley (or his staff): If you’d like to come onto Labor Relations Radio to discuss how this “framework” is harmful to workers, please consider this an open invitation.
