WASHINGTON—By a party-line 206-205 vote on a procedural move, the Republican-run U.S. House rejected Democratic attempts to open up debate and amendments to GOP anti-worker measures. The Dems wanted to attach the Protect The Right To Organize (PRO) Act, labor’s top legislation, to them.
But then, in a complete and unexpected reversal for the House’s Republican leaders, six GOPers joined all the voting Democrats to kill several bills weakening worker protections—“messaging” measures favored by corporate chieftains and the radical right.
And that in turn, prompted House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who had lost control of his own party despite holding the key roll call open for 45 minutes, to postpone calling up a fourth pro-corporate anti-worker measure. He also predicted the ruling Republicans would try to rework the other three.
Democrats tried to upset the GOP messaging during the January 13 floor debate on labor legislation. They argued for opening up the first GOP messaging bill, HR2262, to amendments. If they had won, they planned to offer the PRO Act instead. It’s been labor’s top legislative priority for years.
They failed. But then six Republicans, including five from “swing” districts, joined all 209 voting Democrats to dump the messaging bills. The key vote, 209-215, was on a measure to let bosses mandate “voluntary” retraining sessions for workers, allegedly to improve their skills, without paying them.
Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., top Democrat on the Education and Workforce Committee, said the training measure would take money out of workers’ pockets at a time when workers are economically hurting.
Rep. David Norcross, D-N.J., a co-chair of the House Labor Caucus, added bosses could use the closed doors of “training sessions” to hide the anti-union harangues they now utter on company time—when workers are paid—in so-called “captive audience meetings.”
The meetings include lies about unions, wink-wink nod-nod advice to bosses from union-busters and threats to retaliate against pro-union workers or to move or kill the plant. They’re a common feature of corporate anti-union campaigns. All such captive audience meetings, along with other anti-worker tactics, have one big goal: Total boss control, producing more profits for the capitalists.
Before the unexpected reversal and win, Scott and Norcross—an Electrical Worker and former President of the South Jersey Building and Construction Trades Council—argued strongly for paving the way for the PRO Act as an amendment. They lost.
“As we stand here, workers’ rights are under attack, and working families are struggling to decide between paying rent and paying for groceries,” said Scott, whose committee harbors a nest of rabid Republican right-wingers.
“Republicans are considering proposals that will reduce workers’ wages, adversely affect their retirement savings, and give corporations and bosses loopholes to take money out of their pockets.
This is untenable, and these are the proposals Americans can least afford,” Scott continued.
Instead, Scott said, lawmakers should throw open the GOP’s lead bill—to let bosses order workers to “voluntarily” take courses to upgrade their skills, without paying for the time the workers spent on that dictate—and vote for the PRO Act, HR20, instead.
“This is a critical moment for working families, and we cannot abandon our workers…when they are under attack from anti-worker politicians and lawbreaking corporations,” Scott stated. The PRO Act would “help workers organize, and we know when they organize, they will have higher pay, better benefits, and safer workplaces,” he said. Republicans were silent about the PRO Act.
“For too long, workers have suffered from anti-union attacks and toothless labor laws that undermined their right to work safely and be paid fairly. The PRO Act will help hold lawbreaking employers accountable by imposing meaningful penalties for violating workers’ rights,” Scott continued.
“It will secure free and fair and safe union elections by preventing employer interference” via a ban on so-called “captive audience” meetings, he said.
And the PRO Act would “crack down on corporations that misclassify employees” as so-called “independent contractors.” That status denies workers the right to unionize. It also bans them from earning overtime pay, the federal minimum wage, and receiving workers’ comp and jobless benefits.
Norcross led the fight against the GOP’s HR2262, the measure to let bosses order “voluntary” retraining for workers to develop their skills.
That “voluntary” training would make a perfect cover for captive audience meetings, he declared.
“I’m here to speak out against ‘Flexibility for workers not to be paid education act,’” as Norcross sarcastically renamed the Republican measure. “Yes, I said this disastrous bill would be a blueprint to commit wage theft on a silver platter,” Norcross elaborated.
“In fact, if an employer calls those captive meetings now when they come in to preach why unions are bad, they have to pay the workers for their time,” he explained. The GOP “retraining” bill “would give” bosses “the ability call the meetings ‘a training’ and not pay them.”
Two other GOP anti-worker messaging bills also went down the drain. One would make it easier for bosses to short-tip workers out of pay by broadening the definition of who’s a tipped worker and when—such as a restaurant server who survives on tips but is occasionally called to wash dishes.
Current law says the minimum wage in each city or state covers the dishwashing time. The GOP “messaging” bill drops that exemption—meaning no tips and no pay at all for the worker for those hours. Passing the GOP’s tipped workers bill would harm working women and especially women of color, Education and the Workforce Committee Democrats protested.
“There are estimated to be roughly four million tipped workers in the United States. The tipped workforce is nearly two-thirds female, disproportionately composed of women of color, and disproportionately made up of single parents,” they added. Tipping emerged in the South after the Civil War as a way for bosses to avoid paying Black workers regular wages, they noted. The other GOP messaging bill that went down the drain would “exclude child and dependent care services and payments from the rate used to compute overtime payments.”
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