Outdated labor laws have hampered our fundamental right to join together and negotiate for better wages, benefits and working conditions. The Protecting the Right to Organize Act will empower America’s workers and make our economy work for working people.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka discusses why America needs a strong labor movement and how the Biden administration is committed to strengthening unions.
"The PRO Act would protect and empower workers to exercise our freedom to organize a bargain," Richard Trumka, the president of the AFL-CIO, told NPR in a recent interview. "It's a game changer. If you really want to correct inequality in this country — wages and wealth inequality, opportunity and inequality of power — passing the PRO Act is absolutely essential to doing that."
President Biden proved once again he’s a champion of his own workforce. AFGE members asked Biden to revoke a memo former President Trump had issued in January 2020 that gave the secretary of defense, or their designee, the authority to eliminate collective bargaining rights for civilian workers in the Defense Department (DoD). Biden answered the call, revoking Trump’s memo on Feb. 24 of this year.
“He got it,” Trumka, the president of the AFL-CIO, said of Biden. “Many times you go into meetings like that and you have to start with the basics about why collective bargaining is important, and then you get to the end, and they still really don’t get it,” Trumka, whose organization represents the largest federation of labor unions in the United States, said in a phone interview today. “None of that was necessary with him. He already had that going in. So we talked about solutions.
Liz Shuler and Karen Nussbaum
on Monday, March 8 - 8:41pm
If you’ve never had to make coffee for your boss, it’s thanks to women who organized in the 1970s. And while the electric typewriter is no more, how women of that era organized is relevant—to current battles like organizing big tech, building care infrastructure, and winning labor reform by passing the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act—so women can form and join unions now without fear. So if we’re going to learn anything from history, it’s this: We need labor empowerment laws for the 21st century.
A week after releasing the most pro-union statement from a president in decades, President Biden issued a statement of administration policytoday that strongly supports the passage of the PRO Act. The administration recognizes that the right to organize a union is a fundamental building block of the American Dream. Passing the PRO Act would strengthen and expand working people’s ability to form and join unions.
Anti-Asian racism has skyrocketed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Working people condemn this vile behavior as a stain on our nation. We will continue to fight these injustices.
“We’re at a crossroads. Inaction will only worsen the suffering that working people have weathered over the past year,” said Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO. “But if we commit to rebuilding our communities on an unprecedented scale, we can get through this crisis stronger than before.”
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is using the president’s new message to advocate for the swift passage of Democrats’ Protecting the Right to Organize Act. If passed, the measure would be the first bill to overhaul labor rights since the Taft-Hartley amendments of 1947 to the National Labor Relations Act, which outlawed some organizing tactics and allowed states to enact right-to-work laws. The new bill, among other things, would extend collective bargaining rights to gig workers, overturn state right to work laws, and allow the federal labor board to levy penalties against companies who violate federal labor law. Biden, Trumka wrote in a Monday statement, “has proven he’s willing to speak out and stand with us. Now it’s time to follow words with action.”
