The Daily Signal - This Law Would Empower Union Bosses and Hurt Workers

Episode Date: February 7, 2020

A bill in the House of Representatives would make sweeping changes to American labor laws and give union bosses an enormous amount of power. Rachel Greszler, a research fellow in economics, the budget, and entitlements at The Heritage Foundation, joined The Daily Signal to talk about the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, which--among other things would violate workers' privacy and severely restrict contract work. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Friday, February 7th. I'm Rachel Dahl Judas. And I'm Jared Stetman. Today I'll be interviewing Rachel Gressler on the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, which could fundamentally transform labor law in America. And don't forget, if you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave a review or a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe.

Now on to our top news. President Donald Trump made his first public appearance after as a peach acquittal on Thursday morning. Trump was acquitted in the Senate on both impeachment articles, abuse of power, and obstruction of Congress. At the National Prayer Breakfast, also attended by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Trump raised up two newspapers with headlines that said, acquitted in bold font. He blasted the entire impeachment process. As everybody knows, my family, our great country, and your president have been put through a terrible ordeal. by some very dishonest and corrupt people.

They have done everything possible to destroy us, and by so doing, very badly hurt our nation. At a noon press conference on Thursday, Trump again held up a newspaper with an acquitted headline. Trump said that through the whole impeachment saga, he was, quote, treated unbelievably unfairly. And we were treated. unbelievably unfairly, and you have to understand, we first went through Russia, Russia, Russia.

It was all bullshit. We then went through the Mueller report, and they should have come back one day later. They didn't. They came back two years later, after lives were ruined, after people went bankrupt, after people lost all their money. During Trump's remarks at the 66th annual National Prayer Breakfast, he also mentioned the importance of religion in prayer. Here's what he had to say via Fox News.

As I said on Tuesday in the House Chamber, in America, we don't punish prayer. We don't tear down crosses. We don't ban symbols of faith. We don't muzzle preachers. We don't muzzle pastors. In America, we celebrate faith. We cherish religion. We lift our voices.

in prayer, and we raise our sights to the glory of God. On Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi defended her decision to tear up the text of the State of the Union at the conclusion of President Donald Trump's address. She said at a press conference, quote, I tore up a manifesto of mistruths. Pelosi also said that she prays for Trump. I don't know if the president understands about prayer or people who do pray, but we do pray for the United States of America. I pray for him. President Bush, still President Obama, because it's a heavy responsibility.

And I pray hard for him because he's so off the track of our Constitution, our values, our country, the air our children breathe, the water they drink, and the rest. He really needs our prayers. Trump said at the National Prayer Breakfast, quote, I don't like people who use their faith as justification for doing what know is wrong. Nor do I like people who say, I pray for you when they know that's not so. So many people have been hurt, and we can't let that go on. On Thursday, members of the Republican Study Committee touted their new playbook to bring more

efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability to the federal government. Here's what Congressman Mike Johnson from Louisiana, chairman of the Republican City Committee, said while unveiling the playbook. What we urgently need in the Congress right now, right now, is some solutions that are coming that can have appeal across the aisle and across the political spectrum. And one thing that everybody has to agree upon in the age where we have a nearly $24 trillion federal debt and deficit spending that has just gotten out of control

and a government that's too large. In fact, it's so large, as we point out in the report, that Congress gave the bureaucracy a charge several years ago to count how many agencies and programs there are. And we are still waiting. They had a one-year deadline. That was like, what, eight or nine years ago or something? The government is so large, you can't even count it.

According to a new Gallup poll, 90% of Americans are happy with their personal life. Per Gallup, American satisfaction with their personal life is the highest it's been in a four-decade trend, and two and three Americans say they're very satisfied. It also found that married adults, high-income households, and Republicans were the most satisfied. The poll was taken on January 2nd through the 15th from Gallup's Mood of the Nation poll, which also found a 20-year high in American's faith in the economy. Up next is my interview with Rachel Gressler.

If you're tired of high taxes, fewer health care choices, and bigger and bigger government, it's time to partner with the most impactful conservative organization in America. We're the Heritage Foundation, and we're committed to solving the issue. America faces. Together, we'll fight back against the rising tide of homegrown socialism, and we'll fight four conservative solutions that are making families more free and more prosperous. But we can't do it without you. Please join us at heritage.org. We are now joined by Rachel Gressler, who is a research fellow in economics, the budget, and entitlements at the Heritage Foundation. We brought Rachel on to talk about a piece of

legislation making its way to the House of Representatives to protecting the Right to Organize Act, dubbed the PRO Act, which would have an enormous impact on American Labor Law, the economy, and individuals across the country. Thank you so much for joining us, Rachel. Thanks for having me, Jared. So you actually have a piece right now in The Daily Signal, which I highly encourage listeners to read. It's about six things that this law would do, and I think they were very good. So I'd like to kind of run those down with you.

You actually said in your opening that it would fundamentally upend the U.S. labor market, as we know, which I think is quite a dramatic statement. But if you really dig into the legislation, it does do some things to dramatically change the U.S. labor market. Am I right? It does. It does many things. I've seen estimates somewhere between 20 and 30 different provisions that this has. And you have this wonderful sounding acronym, the Pro Act. We're protecting workers. And it's actually anything but that. They are protecting union bosses. And they are taking away rights and opportunities from workers. You know, you go through these laws and there's just nothing you can see that's going to end up helping workers. You're going to entirely shift the

nature of the labor market, which is doing so well right now. And we're taking people that have previously not been able to find jobs and they're finding them and there's new opportunities. And there's a shift to more people doing independent work and they like that work that they're doing. And this tries to turn that on its back and go back to a 20th century labor market with union bosses at the top of it. Absolutely. And the first point you made, and I think it's really important, was that you said that it violates workers' privacy. Can you explain exactly how that works? Yes. So under the Pro Act, employers would be required to give union officials their employees' personal information, including their home address, their email address, their cell phone number,

their home number, all types of information. And we're talking about more than employers have to give to even the IRS. And so you're essentially saying that unions have a higher, they're higher up than the government here. No state, federal, or local official is given this type of information. And the reason that it's so troublesome is that we have known unions use threatening actions and intimidation and coercion going to these workers' homes. They threaten their families. I've heard of one worker who said he pulled out his Second Amendment rights because he was worried about what they were doing. So this is a really harmful provision. That's incredible. You said also this is the second point that you made.

You said that it's just workers of the right to a secret ballot election, which it's interesting, given that secret ballot election is kind of considered one of those cornerstones of the democratic process here in modern America. Can you explain how that would work? Exactly. And so that's just the basic democracy is people should be able to vote without anybody else seeing their vote and without any threat of intimidation or coercion. Well, under the Pro Act, they would allow this card check process. So unions can currently go from door to door or collect their signatures from employees wherever they find them. And the employee will say, yes, I agree to hold an election. And that's a secret ballot election where they can then express their true choice.

Maybe they were intimidated or forced to sign the card saying they wanted an election. But then at least now in that election, they can say, no, I don't want to unionize. What the Pro Act would do would substitute that actual secret ballot election and allow the card check process to be the election in and of itself. And so you're taking away this fundamental component of democracy. And it's a bit ironic that at the same time that all these Democrats have signed on and support the Pro Act, they argued and they held up the USMCA trade legislation until a provision was put in there that guaranteed secret ballot elections in Mexico. Wow. That's quite a flip and a reversal right there. So another one here, this is the third point that you made.

And I think it's quite important. You said it subjects neutral third parties to strikes. and boycotts. That's incredible. Can you explain that? Yeah, so unions have the right to strike the company in which they have, their negotiations are ongoing. They don't have the right to go after secondary companies. And so an example here is that the union, hotel employees union had negotiations ongoing with their hotel and they were striking that one. But then they started to go after all these people that had contracts with the hotel that were going to host events there. And they were going after those managers following them around for days,

incessantly calling them, threatening them, saying you need to cancel your contract with this hotel company. And so the reason that these secondary boycotts are illegal today is because they do unfairly burdened neutral third parties. And they can cause economic harm. They can lead to those companies having to shut down. And so there's a reason these are illegal and we don't want to make them legal now. Absolutely. So the fourth point you have here, and this is actually interesting, You said that it overturns the franchising business model. I think one thing you brought up, and this seems does need to be particularly pernicious, is that franchises will be liable for business outside of their control for things that the larger business did.

Can you kind of explain what this rule would do? Yeah. So across the U.S., we have about 750,000 different franchises, and that's not just McDonald's. It's not just the restaurants. There are actually 300 different types of business models that are franchising, you know, car dealerships, gas stations, hotels, gyms, and they all employ about 8 million workers. But what the Pro Act would do is it would say that the franchisor, the big company, is responsible for the individual employees at each of those franchising units,

despite the fact that they didn't hire them, they don't determine their wages, they have no direct control over them. And so it's basically upending that and saying you can't have this franchise model anymore when we see how successful it's been. Yeah, it seems like in some ways, I mean, it would be hard to even start a franchise at this point. If you had a model like that at any time, you know, there could be this lawsuit that brings down the whole company. I mean, right? Exactly. And that's why when the Obama administration put into place this definition that puts the authority on that large franchiser, it costs

billions. Fortunately, we just saw the Trump administration has reversed that and they've put it back to no, you're only going to have legal liability if you're directly controlling that employee. And of course, that's what it should be. Absolutely. So number five, and this one is important to me as a journalist and somebody who has a lot of connections to those who freelance and have difficulty right now in California. You said that it upends the gig economy contracting an independent work. And it's interesting. This sounds a lot like what we saw recently in California with AB5 that has caused so much chaos

there. But you kind of make it seem like this may even be worse. It is actually worse because in California with AB5, they started out with a bunch of exemptions, doctors, lawyers, insurance agents. and then they've had to add on additional exemptions because of lawsuits like independent truckers and we'll keep seeing more and more. And so they at least have some exemptions to this. The Pro Act doesn't have those exemptions. And so it's upending.

And it's not just the gig economy, the Uber drivers. It's anybody who contracts, anybody who freelances, anybody who does independent work. And that's a growing section of the labor force. You know, one out of three Americans perform some type of independent work. Only about 10 percent of Americans do that is their primary job. But nevertheless, it's a way for people to have more opportunities, to earn additional income, to support all sorts of things. And so this isn't something that we want to shut down, but we're seeing in California, as they've implemented this, it's killing jobs left and right. People are having to leave the state to go elsewhere.

If you implement it nationally, they don't have anywhere else to go. And we're chasing after this small group of people that say, you know, they're not getting the benefits that they want. But nine out of ten people who do independent work for their primary jobs say that they choose it specifically because they want. that independence. They don't want to have to answer to a boss. Right. It seems like, frankly, it kills whole industries and kind of shuts people out of potentially not just gainful employment, but extra employment that's maybe supplementing what they're already doing in making things less convenient for regular people who don't always have, you know, don't want just a standard 9 to 5 job whose lives experiences take them somewhere else.

And you think it's going to negatively impact women more than men and lower income people, particularly singer moms you think of, or disabled individuals. who turn to this more flexible independent work or the gig economy to pick up that income. So I guess maybe to sum it up, bottom line, who benefits from this law and who loses in this law? It's the union bosses that benefit and the Democratic lawmakers who support them. And one of the big union bosses just sent out a threat saying if you do not vote for this or if you in any way delay or uphold it, then you won't see a dollar from us. So you can see who benefits the most from it.

And the workers are the ones who lose. They lose out on choices, on opportunities, and they're forced to. back into that 20th century 9 to 5 model where you must report to a boss and you can't be in charge of yourself. Absolutely. Well, Rachel, thank you so much for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. Thank you. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to the Daily Single Podcast brought to you from the Robert H. Bruce Radio Studio at the Heritage Foundation. Please be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or Spotify.

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