Say excessive fines and new policies would empower unions to bully employers and intimidate small business owners with help from the NLRB – now controlled by former union lawyers

Washington, D.C. – The Coalition for a Democratic Workplace (CDW), composed of more than 600 major business organizations, released the following statement in response to the draft budget reconciliation bill from the House Education and Labor Committee, which includes provisions from the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, including excessive penalties, unnecessary restrictions negatively impacting opportunities for gig workers and limiting employer free speech, and $5 million aimed at replacing secret ballot in union representation elections with phone-based voting— which would expose employees to union intimidation.

The following statement is attributable to CDW Chair Kristen Swearingen:

“With their anti-worker PRO Act stalled, Big Labor lobbyists and their allies in Congress have jammed their radical policies into the budget reconciliation bill.

“Bottomline, these changes in the reconciliation bill have nothing to do with the budget and are intended to force unions on workers by taking away opportunities to work in the gig economy, limit employees from hearing facts about unions and how union spend or misspend employees dues, and intimidate small business owners to force them to yield to union demands. The inclusion of these measures will hurt small businesses and infringe on the rights of workers.

“While businesses and workers across the country are slowly getting back on their feet after the damage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, rewriting our nation’s labor laws solely to benefit Big Labor bosses would cause irreparable harm to our country’s economic efforts and threatens to derail its recovery.

“We strongly urge Members of Congress to reject these provisions in the budget reconciliation bill, which is intended to fund government programs, not advance Big Labor’s radical agenda that will only hurt small businesses and workers.”

 

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About The Coalition for a Democratic Workplace

CDW is a broad-based coalition of hundreds of organizations representing hundreds of thousands of employers and millions of employees in various industries across the country concerned with a long-standing effort by some in the labor movement to make radical changes to the National Labor Relations Act without regard to the severely negative impact they would have on employees, employers, and the economy. CDW was originally formed in 2005 in opposition to the so-called Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) – a bill similar to the PRO Act – that would have stripped employees of the right to secret ballots in union representation elections and allowed arbitrators to set contract terms regardless of the consequence to workers or businesses.

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