On Wednesday, Bernie Sanders introduced the Workplace Democracy Act, a bill that aims to increase America’s unionization rate by:
• Allowing workers to form unions simply by collecting signatures in favor of unionization from a majority of their colleagues, instead of holding elections, which provide employers with the opportunity to lobby against the union before ballots are cast.
• Requiring companies to bargain with a new union within ten days of receiving a request.
• Nullifying right-to-work laws, by requiring workers to pay some amount of dues to unions that bargain on their behalf, regardless of the state they live in.
• Drastically increasing penalties on employers that illegally fire workers during union drives.
• And expanding the definition of “employee” so that America’s growing population of contract laborers — like the “gig economy” workers who power Uber and Lyft — can access the wide array of mandatory benefits that only employees can currently claim (including the right to collective bargaining). Specifically, the bill stipulates that a company’s workers are “employees,” unless the services they provide are “outside the usual course of the employer’s business” (so, a hardware store can hire a plumber to fix its toilets on contract, but a plumbing service would need to employ said plumber, if it wishes to avail itself of his or her services).
Thirteen of Sanders’s Democratic colleagues have signed onto this legislation — including virtually every suspected 2020 hopeful in the upper chamber (Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Elizabeth Warren, and Kamala Harris are all represented). And yet, a wide array of (self-identified) progressive senators — including ones from states with strong labor presences — have not signed onto the bill.
It’s possible that these legislators simply haven’t gotten around to it — there is a lot going on right now, and this bill isn’t gonna come up for a vote any time soon. It’s also possible that they object to some little detail in this proposal but are hard at work at their own labor bills.
But if 35 Senate Democrats have no intention of supporting comprehensive labor-law reform of any kind, then 35 Senate Democrats are so deeply committed to protecting the ability of employers to exploit their workers, they’re willing to put their party at an electoral disadvantage for the sake of abetting such exploitation. There’s little reason to believe that this actually the case. But those who haven’t signed onto Sanders’s bill would do well to clarify that it isn’t, posthaste.
https://www.google.com/amp/amp.nyma...ould-back-bernie-sanderss-new-labor-bill.html
Sanders/Turner 2020
