LABOR RIGHTS

DEMOCRAT – Joseph Biden and LABOR

Joe Biden knows the importance of strong unions and has been a supporter of working men and women for his entire political career.

“Strong unions built the great American middle class. Everything that defines what it means to live a good life and know you can take care of your family – the 40-hour work week, paid leave, health care protections, a voice in your workplace – is because of workers who organized unions and fought for worker protections.” — Joe Biden

As a candidate, Biden’s labor policies are on point. Biden is proposing a plan to grow a stronger, more inclusive middle class – the backbone of the American economy – by strengthening public and private sector unions and helping all workers bargain successfully for what they deserve.

 

A summary of key points to his goals/plan include:

Encourage and incentivize unionization and collective bargaining.

Ensure that workers are treated with dignity and receive the pay, benefits, and workplace protections they deserve.

Ensure all workers have access to quality, affordable health care.

Guarantee all workers are able to send their children to quality public schools and have access to universal pre-kindergarten.

Provide education and training beyond high school, including federally Registered Apprenticeships.

Support a clean energy revolution that creates millions of unionized middle-class jobs.

Meet our commitment to invest first in American workers and ensure that labor is at the table to negotiate every trade deal.

Protecting pensions, starting with passing the Butch Lewis Act, which addresses the pension crisis by creating a new office within the Treasury Department called the Pension Rehabilitation Administration (PRA). The PRA would allow pension plans to borrow money needed to remain solvent and continue providing security for retirees and workers for decades to come.

Check the abuse of corporate power over labor and hold corporate executives personally accountable for violations of labor laws. Hold corporations and executives personally accountable for interfering with organizing efforts and violating other labor laws.

 

Strongly supports the Protecting the Right to Organize Act’s (PRO Act) provisions instituting financial penalties on companies that interfere with workers’ organizing efforts, including firing or otherwise retaliating against workers.

Go beyond the PRO Act by enacting legislation to impose even stiffer penalties on corporations and to hold company executives personally liable when they interfere with organizing efforts, including criminally liable when their interference is intentional.

 

Aggressively pursue employers who violate labor laws, participate in wage theft, or cheat on their taxes by intentionally misclassifying employees as independent contractors.

 

Stop employers who intentionally misclassify their employees as independent contractors.

Enact legislation that makes worker misclassification a substantive violation of law under all federal labor, employment, and tax laws with additional penalties beyond those imposed for other violations.

Fund a dramatic increase in the number of investigators in labor and employment enforcement agencies to facilitate a large anti-misclassifi- cation effort.

 

Penalize companies that bargain in bad faith.

 

Give the NLRB the necessary power to force any employer found to be bargaining in bad faith back to the negotiating table, as called for in the PRO Act.

 

Ensure federal dollars do not flow to employers who engage in union-busting activities, participate in wage theft, or violate labor law.

 

Institute a multi-year federal debarment for all employers who illegally oppose unions.

Only award contracts to employers who support their workers, including those who pay a $15 per hour minimum wage and family sustaining benefits.

 

Make it easier for workers who choose to unionize to do so.

 

Ban employers’ mandatory meetings with their employees, including captive audience m

Reinstate and codify into law the Obama-Biden Administration’s “persuader rule” requiring employers to report not only information communicated to employees, but also the activities of third-party consultants who work behind the scenes to manage employers’ anti-union campaigns.

A co-sponsor of the original Employee Free Choice Act, Biden supports workers choosing to form a union if a majority signs authorization cards empowering a union to represent them. He will go beyond the PRO Act by allowing workers to use this process, called “card check,” as an initial option for forming a union, not merely an option granted when the employer has illegally interfered in the election process.

 

Ensure federal dollars do not flow to employers who engage in union-busting activities, participate in wage theft, of violate labor law.

Legislation he supports includes:

Public Safety Employer Employee Cooperation Act

Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act

 

Ban state laws prohibiting unions from collecting dues or comparable payments from all workers who benefit from union representation that unions are legally obligated to provide. As president, Biden will repeal the Taft-Hartley provisions that allow states to impose “right to work” laws.

Create a cabinet-level working group that will solely focus on promoting union organizing and collective bargaining in the public and private sectors.

Ensure workers can bargain with the employer that actually holds the power, including franchisors, and ensure those employers are accountable for guaranteeing workplace protections.

Ensure that workers can exercise their right to strike without fear of reprisal. Biden will fight for passage of the PRO Act to protect intermittent strikes, ban permanent strike replacements, and remove the ill-conceived ban on secondary boycotts once and for all.

Empower the National Labor Relations Board to fulfill its intended purpose of protecting workers. Biden will appoint members to the NLRB who will protect, rather than sabotage, worker organizing, collective bargaining, and workers’ rights to engage in concerted activity whether or not they belong to a union.

Reinstate and expand protections for federal employees. He will restore federal employees’ rights to organize and bargain collectively, and will direct his agencies to bargain with federal employee unions over non-mandatory subjects of bargaining.

Expand long overdue rights to farmworkers and domestic workers. Biden supports:

 

Fairness for Farmworkers Act

Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights

 

Extend the right to organize and bargain collectively to independent contractors. Biden supports modifying antitrust law and guaranteeing that independent contractors can organize and bargain collectively for their mutual protection and benefit.

Increase the federal minimum wage to $15.

Ensure workers in the “gig economy” and beyond receive the legal benefits and protections they deserve.

Eliminate non-compete clauses and no-poaching agreements that hinder the ability of employees to seek higher wages, better benefits and working conditions by changing employers.

Increase workplace safety and health.

Ensure workers can have their day in court by ending mandatory arbitration clauses imposed by employers on workers.

Expand protections for undocumented immigrants who report labor violations. Biden will further extend these protections to victims of any workplace violations of federal, state, or local labor law by securing passage of the