Up for debate in Congress is HR 842, the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which President Biden publicly endorsed. The purpose of this bill is to:

penalize corporations that try to bust unions;

protect workers engaged in organizing drives;

allow workers to take employers to court if they violate collecting bargaining laws;

override “right to work” (for less) laws, which several states have implements;

prevent companies who use gig workers, like Uber, from classifying their employees as “independent contractors,” so they couldn’t organize;

and support workers’ rights as they’re engaged in strikes and boycotts.

For decades, corporations have done everything they can to prevent workers from organizing, and the result is the decline of union density, and with it the decline in wages and their ability, since just after the Second World War, to take care of their families with just one paycheck; now, both spouses have to work just to barely get by. Meanwhile, the wages of CEOs have risen, since late in the 1960’s to approximately 415 percent higher than the wages of a front-line worker. In spite of the propaganda from advocates of neo-liberal “free market”, workers and consumers have not benefitted tax breaks and other government handouts to corporations, but have only used the extra money to buy up their own stock to raise the value, and stash it on foreign bank accounts, as shown in the case of the Panama Papers.

No meaningful change for working and low-income people will take please without the ability of workers to organize into unions for their benefit; their grandfathers and great-grandfathers, who fought and sometimes died for the right to organize, knew this. We can’t let them down. Please contact your Congress-members and senators and urge them to vote for the Pro Act. This bill will be another step in bringing America forward to a better place.

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