03 Feb Tell Your Representative to Pass the PRO Act
Working-class and middle-class families in the United States deserve income security and should be able to organize their co-workers to demand living wages and healthy working conditions. In a time when the richest Americans’ wealth growth has increased by more than 200% while wages remain stagnant for the rest of us, we need our lawmakers to protect workers’ rights.
Yesterday, the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and Labor advanced the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, H.R. 2474, a bold proposal to ensure American workers can organize and negotiate for higher wages, better benefits, and safer working conditions. If passed, the PRO Act would provide millions of workers across the country with additional protections to organize and collectively bargain.
In response to rising income inequality that is leaving workers and middle-class families behind, the PRO Act would empower millions of Americans to stand together and negotiate for a fair share of the profits they produce.
This legislation is an important step toward closing the gap between current unionization rates and the percentage of workers who wish to be in a union. It’s time for our lawmakers to show their support for working people and families across the country.
– John Price, BCTGM International Union Director of Organization
Call your member of Congress: Tell them to pass the PRO Act!
A study published in the National Bureau of Economic Research found that unions have consistently provided workers with a 10- to 20-percent wage boost over their non-union counterparts over the past eight decades.
“Labor unions have long fueled our nation’s prosperity, protected the health and safety of American workers, and protected a strong middle class. By passing the PRO Act, we can take a historic step towards improving the quality of life for workers and their families across the country,” said Chairman Robert C. “Bobby” Scott.
The PRO Act protects workers’ right to organize by:
- Authorizing meaningful penalties for employers that violate workers’ right to organize,
- Strengthening and streamlining support for workers who face retaliation for exercising their rights,
- Helping workers secure a first contract, and
- Making union elections free and fair by creating stronger protections for workers who want to organize.
- And close loopholes that allow companies to misclassify workers as independent contractors
To read the fact sheet on the PRO Act click here.
Call your member of Congress: Tell them to pass the PRO Act!
Once you submit the form from the AFL-CIO site, you will receive a call connecting you to your member of Congress.