The bill passed the House Tuesday night on a vote of 225-206. The bill gained the support of five House Republicans, and was co-sponsored by three Republicans: Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, and Chris Smith and Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey.
If enacted into law, the PRO Act would be one of the most dramatic changes to US labor law in decades. One of the bill’s most significant provisions is a policy that would override state right-to-work laws that weaken unions by letting unionized workers not pay dues. It would also create tougher penalties for employers who interfere in employees’ efforts to unionize.
Should these penalties work as designed, they would remove a major barrier to unionization, Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, told Vox in a recent interview.
“It’s the workers facing an uneven playing field when they try to assert their right to form a union,” Appelbaum said. “The employer has all sorts of opportunities to intimidate workers and to interfere with their desire to have a fair choice.”
Finally, the bill would give independent contractors and gig workers the right to collectively bargain alongside employees. There has been some pushback to this provision from businesses — and independent contractors themselves, who are afraid it could restrict their ability to continue to freelance. But House Democrats argue the bill would not restrict an independent contractors’ flexibility.
“It is a serious problem when employers misclassify employees as independent contractors in order to prevent their workers from organizing,” House Education and Labor Committee Chair Bobby Scott (D-VA) told Vox in a statement. “The PRO Act closes that loophole by giving eligible freelancers and gig workers, who are classified as employees, the right to decide for themselves whether to form a union. Or not.”
Scott added, “Anyone making wild claims that this bill would mean the end of freelancing or restrict workers’ flexibility is either mistaken or deliberately misrepresenting the facts.”
The bill’s passage comes as a time when membership in private sector unions is very low. Just 6.3 percent of private sector workers belong to a union, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, while workers’ membership in public sector unions is over five times that number, around 34.8 percent.
Beyond this bill, union organizers are seeing glimmers of hope, however. For one thing, a study by the progressive Economic Policy Institute found workers in unions were less likely to get laid off than their non-unionized counterparts during the Covid-19 recession, making a case for more union representation. For another, the administration of President Joe Biden is positioning itself as far friendlier to organized labor than even past Democratic administrations.