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President Biden Should Veto Anti-Worker Lawmakers’ Attack on Union Rights [1]

['Karla Walter', 'Associate Director', 'Media Relations', 'Director', 'Federal Affairs']

Date: 2024-07

Anti-worker lawmakers are quietly advancing House Joint Resolution 98 through Congress, a bill that would harm working people across the economy by undercutting workers’ ability to come together in unions. The Biden administration has announced that the president will veto the bill, which would invalidate new rules adopted by appointees to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB): “Reversing this rulemaking will prevent workers from exercising their right to bargain for higher wages, better benefits, and safer working conditions.” Moreover, the legislation demonstrates a growing divide between the economic values of everyday Americans and policymakers in Congress who say they support the working class but advance policies designed to weaken workers’ power in the economy and allow corporations to break the law without accountability.

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House Joint Resolution 98 Americans’ support for unions is the highest it has been in decades. More than two-thirds say that they support unions, and the partisan divides on unions among younger generations are narrowing. In addition, a majority of Americans support broad policies to fix U.S. labor law so that workers who want to form a union are free to do so, and a bipartisan plurality supports the strengthening of rules to prevent companies from evading coverage under labor laws by outsourcing their workers. Yet Republican leaders in Congress are advancing legislation that would undermine Biden administration policies designed to strengthen organizing rights and raise wages for workers across a variety of sectors. On January 12, 2024, House lawmakers passed House Joint Resolution 98 to rescind new “joint employer” regulations that empower franchise and outsourced workers to exercise their labor rights. Federal labor law recognizes that the company that signs a worker’s paycheck may not be the only company that controls workplace conditions. It protects workers in these situations by including joint employer standards to help ensure that companies that share control are jointly liable for violations of the law.

Joint employer standards for union workers under the Biden and Trump administrations President Joe Biden’s appointees to the NLRB adopted rules to uphold requirements that corporations bargain with unionized workers over the work conditions that they have the authority to control, as well as to hold accountable entities that violate the right of workers to come together in unions or speak up against unfair work conditions. These rules address only the employment tests under the National Labor Relations Act. Federal laws governing minimum wage, workplace safety, anti-discrimination, family and medical leave, and protections for migrant workers include their own employment definitions that help ensure that companies that share control over workplace conditions are jointly liable for violations. The new rules would strengthen protections that were hollowed out during the Trump administration. In 2020, former President Donald Trump’s NLRB appointees adopted rules that made it easier for large corporations to escape liability for labor violations and avoid bargaining obligations by relying on smaller companies—such as franchisees, temporary staffing agencies, and labor contractors—to supply their labor force. While many corporations do not outsource workers with the aim of violating workplace laws, some corporations may try to relinquish the official title of employer but not the power to control their labor suppliers’ business decisions or workplace conditions.

House Joint Resolution 98 would prevent workers from holding large corporations with the power to change workplace practices accountable for labor law violations. Strong joint employer standards are important in working-class jobs that are at risk of outsourcing, such as restaurant and hotel workers, janitorial positions and security officers, home care workers, farm laborers, coal miners, and construction and warehouse workers. And while industry associations, such as the International Franchise Association, claim that strong joint employment standards are a job killer, during the Obama administration, franchise employment outpaced private sector job growth. This was also the last time strong joint employer protections were in place.

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[1] Url: https://www.americanprogress.org/article/president-biden-should-veto-anti-worker-lawmakers-attack-on-union-rights/

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