Golden reintroduces PRO Act to Protect Workers’ Right to Organize

Last week, Congressman Jared Golden reintroduced H.R. 20, the Richard L. Trumka Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, a comprehensive proposal to protect workers’ right to bargain collectively for higher wages, better benefits and safer workplaces.

“For too long, anti-worker policies and bad legal decisions have made it too easy for employers to crack down on our rights and retaliate against working people forming unions because the penalties for breaking labor laws are just absorbed as a cost of doing business," said Cynthia Phinney, President of the Maine AFL-CIO. "The PRO Act would level the playing field and allow workers to freely choose to join a union and bargain for a better life. We applaud Congressman Jared Golden for his consistent support for this critical reform that will hold union-busting corporations accountable, repeal anti-worker laws, and remove barriers to organizing and bargaining.”

Large corporations and the wealthy continue to capture the rewards of a growing economy while working families and middle-class Americans are left behind. From 1979 to 2023, annual wages for the bottom 90 percent of households increased just 44 percent, while average incomes for the wealthiest 1 percent increased more than 180 percent.

Unions are critical to increasing wages and creating a strong economy that rewards working people. Through the power of bargaining, the typical union worker earns 16 percent more than the typical non-union worker.

The PRO Act protects the basic right to join a union by:

• Holds employers accountable for violating workers’ rights by authorizing meaningful penalties, facilitating initial collective bargaining agreements, and closing loopholes that allow employers to misclassify their employees as supervisors and independent contractors.

• Empowers workers to exercise their right to organize by strengthening support for workers who suffer retaliation for exercising their rights, protecting workers’ right to support secondary boycotts, ensuring workers’ unions can collect “fair share” fees, and authorizing a private right of action for violation of workers’ rights.

• Secures free, fair, and safe union elections by preventing employers from interfering in union elections, prohibiting captive audience meetings, and requiring employers to be transparent with their workers.

Golden has been a cosponsor of the PRO Act in every Congress since he was first elected in 2018. He helped bring the bill to the House floor in 2020and 2021, when it passed with bipartisan support. The bill has never received a vote in the Senate.