Hawley offers gift to union leaders, not workers

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) reportedly has proposed a “pro-worker framework for the 119th Congress” that amounts to a watered down wishlist of items wanted by unions leaders. Hawley’s proposal mainly features items meant to get more workers into unions, not to give the workers more authority within those unions.

The senator is reportedly circulating the proposal among colleagues and does not have it posted on his own website. The draft document was obtained and posted by the website Punchbowl News and reported on by pro-labor news sites.

Hawley’s proposal includes five items. Topping the list is requiring employers to post official notices regarding union rights in workplaces. Federal contractors are already required to do this. Hawley would presumably extend it to all private sector companies. Putting up one more poster in the break room is the one unobjectionable item on Hawley’s list.

It’s the second proposal to hold “abusive employers accountable” that tips where Hawley is coming from. The proposal singles out warehouse workers at “big corporations like Amazon” by penalizing “unsafe work speed quotas.” Unions such as the Teamsters have been trying to organize Amazon for years. Hawley’s proposal is  an attempt to hobble Amazon by taking away the very thing that gives the retailer its edge: its speedy delivery of purchases. But there is a solution! If those warehouses were unionized, then the union would determine when (and, ahem, if…) the workers made complaints about workplace conditions. The union could then strike a deal with management on work speed.

Hawley’s third proposal is to prohibit employers from holding mandatory attendance meetings for workers in which they discuss unionization. Employers have to be careful what they say during these meetings because the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) forbids them from firing, threatening, or intimidating workers who wish to have a union. They can only say things like, “Here’s what’s likely to happen if you form a union…” It’s usually the only way for workers to get a full understanding of what unionization entails. Unions despise these meetings because they tend to be effective at dissuading workers. Hawley’s proposal would ensure that in most cases workers hear only what the union wants them to hear.

The meetings are admittedly troublesome since the individual worker is given no choice about attending. Yet there are quite a few ways in which the NLRA limits the rights of individual workers that Hawley isn’t concerned about correcting. For example, should workers be able to refrain from joining a union without fear of losing their jobs? That’s a right guaranteed in only 27 states. Why not all of them? Another example is that the NLRA prohibits workers from negotiating salary and benefits on their own if they think they can get a better deal than what their union negotiated.  

The fourth proposal is to force employers to join in collective bargaining within ten days of workers voting to join a union. The problem here is, what if the election is contested? There are frequent disputes over which workers are eligible to vote and how the elections are conducted. Hawley’s proposal would allow unions to still contest the elections they lost but effectively prevent businesses from being able to contest the elections that they lost, regardless of what shenanigans happened. This creates the possibility that workers could get railroaded into a union even if a majority voted against having one.

The final proposal is stiffer penalties for business for violating the NLRA and allowing workers to pursue civil cases if the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency that enforces the NLRA, decides a case isn’t worth pursuing. This undermines the point of having a federal agency to oversee union-management relations. It will also invite frivolous lawsuits.

This is not a proposal to enhance workers’ rights. Only the proposal to allow workers to forego mandatory meetings actually enhances workers’ rights, though its practical result would be to leave workers less informed about unions. Mostly, it is a list of things unions leaders would like to have to punish businesses that defy them.  

The proposal is the latest fruit of an ongoing effort by union leaders to build support within the Republican Party instead of antagonizing the GOP as a bunch of corporate stooges, which had been the unions’ go-to move in recent decades. Hawley has been one of the Republicans working with unions like the International Brotherhood of Teamsters the closest on this effort.

President Trump’s rise in the GOP helped to spark this shift in tactics. Trump has long had a complicated love-hate relationship with unions dating back to his days as a New York real estate developer who had to negotiate with the building trade unions. He’s popular among the union rank-and-file, however. That appears to be an extension of his general appeal to blue-collar workers, rather than any specific labor-related policy he has held. That popularity has pushed the labor movement, which had usually been hostile to Trump during his first administration, to try a more conciliatory approach this time. Teamsters President Sean O’Brien’s invitation to speak at the 2024 Republican convention signaled the shift in approach.

Hawley’s proposal is an attempt to build on that union support. The appeal of this is obvious: Swinging the unions away from supporting Democrats and into the GOP column would be a huge political win. Just making unions more of swing vote would be a significant change. Hawley’s proposal is built on the mistaken assumption that Republicans need to adopt the policies favored by union leaders to do this. Trump is living proof that Republicans do not have to do that.