It is important that AGMA employers familiarize themselves with the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which has passed the U.S. House of Representatives. The Act makes fundamental changes to dozens of labor laws which will impact signatory contractors. Take a look and reach out to AGMA with questions.
A quick overview includes:
- The PRO Act would allow picketing directly against neutral contractors to gain leverage in a dispute with another employer.
- The Act would eliminate separate gates on jobsites to contain picketing.
- It would legalize picketing in jurisdictional disputes and eliminate National Labor Relations Board (Board or NLRB) procedures for resolving them.
- It would allow unlimited picketing for recognition, even against neutral employers.
- The Act eliminates a contractor’s ability to sue a union for damages due to a union’s secondary activity.
- The PRO Act would allow intermittent and possibly partial strikes and slowdowns.
- It prohibits permanent replacement of strikers.
- It makes pre-strike lockouts by contractors unlawful.
- It eliminates a contractor’s (or association’s) right to bargain to impasse and implement terms for a new contract.
- It allows expansion of union-only subcontracting restrictions beyond the jobsite – and the right to strike to get them.
- It expands joint employer liability for another employer’s unfair labor practices and bargaining obligations.
- It adds civil penalties for employers and creates personal liability for directors and officers of up to $100,000 for unfair labor practices.
- It makes an employer responsible for back pay, front pay, and other damages plus an additional amount of two times those damages in termination or other cases of “serious economic harm.”
- It creates a private right of action for employees to sue employers in federal court even if their charges have been dismissed by the Board, where they can get those same damages, plus damages for pain and suffering, punitive damages, and attorney’s fees and costs.