Some 400 bills, many important to workers remain stalled in the GOP-majority Senate, where right-wing Majority Leader Mitch McConnell won’t schedule them to be heard.
Besides the blockade of legislation approved by the House of Representatives or passed out of key committees, the Senate faces the unscheduled impeachment trial of President Trump, the vote on the proposed USMCA trade deal, and 2020 campaign votes, kicking off this month in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Bills stuck in Nowhere Land include: the comprehensive labor-law reform measure, the Protect the Right to Organize (PRO) Act (OK’d by the House Education and Labor Committee); equal pay for equal work; a minimum-wage increase; comprehensive election and ethics reform; Voting Rights Act renewal; getting OSHA to prevent violence against health-care workers; the Protect America’s Workers Act, which updates and strengthens job safety and health laws; and resolving problems faced by financially troubled multi-employer pension plans.
Democratic Centrists propose heavy fines for labor lawbreakers. Democratic presidential contenders Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg want to punish criminal employers with stiff fines and criminal charges, they said at recent Iowa appearances.
Biden praised unions as a counterweight to corporate greed, saying, “When you’re strong, you’re the only ones that keep the barbarians out.”
Buttigieg proposed hefty fines on firms that violate labor law or misclassify workers as “independent contractors,” thereby denying them worker rights, unemployment insurance and workers comp, while still shouldering their own and employers’ shares of Medicare and Social Security payroll taxes.
“When a company is breaking the law, whether it is misclassification or whatever it is, we need to have multi-million-dollar penalties,” Buttigieg said, adding that not only is there a lack of labor-law enforcement, but “even when there’s a violation, the fine doesn’t have any teeth. That will end when I’m president. The penalties will be harsh enough to make them change.”
Teamsters, students beat Univ. of Chicago attempt to ban unionization.
Hundreds of undergraduates working long hours for low pay and in lousy working conditions and Teamsters Local 743 prevailed in federal court after a three-year legal battle.
The students voted to organize with the Teamsters – the first undergrads at any U.S. college to unionize – but the university protested to the National Labor Relations Board (where they lost), then in the 7th Court of Appeals, which ruled for the union and students Dec. 17, when Judge Michael Kanne ordered university bosses to stop breaking the law and recognize and bargain with the group.
Elsewhere, Clark College faculty in Vancouver, Wash., authorized a strike if the administration doesn’t agree to long-overdue catch-up raises. About 300 part-time and full-time faculty unanimously voted to strike if necessary.
The Clark College Association for Higher Education, an affiliate of the Washington Education Association teachers union, has been negotiating for 14 months, and both parties have been in mediation since June.
“Our goal is to avoid a strike. We are willing to do what it takes to get a fair contract,” said union president Suzanne Southerland. “It’s their turn in negotiations.”
News briefs courtesy of The Labor Paper