Hawley's Folly: A Republican Senator Is Reportedly Working With Teamsters On A 'GOP-Friendly' PRO Act
Coming to a compromise on a bad bill for businesses and tens of millions of independent contractors may be an impossibility.
By Peter List, Editor | November 26, 2024
Following President-Elect Trump’s pick of Lori Chavez-DeRemer—a one-term, pro-union Republican member of the House of Representatives—as his Secretary of Labor at the urging of Teamsters president Sean O’Brien, Bloomberg’s Josh Eidelson penned a piece about the nomination on Monday.
While the article itself covered her nomination overall, many readers may have missed a one-line statement about the now (presumably) doomed Protecting the Right to Organize Act (aka PRO Act), which is this:
The bill went nowhere in the Republican-controlled House and fared little better in the narrowly Democratic Senate, though the Teamsters are working with US Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, a Trump ally, to develop a more GOP-friendly alternative.
If a more “GOP-friendly alternative” to the PRO Act exists, it is hard to see where.
As written, the PRO Act has many provisions that are anathema to most of the business community and millions of Americans who earn their living as independent contractors.
Within the existing version of the PRO Act are such provisions as:
The elimination of "Right-to-Work” states, which would require millions of workers to pay union dues or agency fees or be fired from their jobs
Dictating wages and benefits upon unionized private-sector businesses through government-mandated arbitration 120 days after becoming unionized.
Foisting the so-called ABC Test on independent contractors and the businesses that use them. The ABC Test is what California’s AB5 codified in 2020 (when it went into effect), resulting in thousands of independent contractors in California losing their income. If put into effect at the national level, it may, in practical terms, "kill” the gig economy.
Allow unions to unionize so-called “micro-units” (such as an employer’s individual departments or specific job classifications)
Change the definition of “joint employment” and force businesses, including franchisors and franchisees, to alter their structures or face liability
There is more to the PRO Act than that which is listed above.
However, regardless of politics, it seems almost impossible for a compromise bill that would appease Mr. O’Brien and his union cohorts and be “GOP-friendly” to the extent that it will not cause injury to businesses and the American workforce.