Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) and the Center for Worker Freedom (CWF) urge members of the House of Representatives to vote against the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act (H.R. 2474).

On September 16, 2019, ATR led a coalition letter against the PRO Act with signatures from more than 60 groups and activists. Today, that letter has even more signatures.

These signers oppose this legislation because of the harm this bill would cause to American workers.

If signed into law, some of the key provisions of the PRO Act would:

1. Violate the privacy of workers by forcing employers to give unions the contact information (including home addresses, cell phone and landline numbers, and email addresses) of their workers without the consent of these workers.
2. Effectively invalidate state Right-to-Work laws, forcing private sector workers to pay fees to unions to keep their jobs.
3. Change union elections to allow union bosses to collect cards from workers to demonstrate support for the union, rather than holding a secret ballot election.
4. Adopt California’s “ABC” test for independent contractors, significantly reducing the number of workers in the gig economy.
5. Codify the expanded joint employer standard, severely harming franchises and their employees.
6. Codify shortened representation election time frames, giving the unions a large advantage in these elections by shortening the time for debate over unionization.

In addition, the PRO Act would increase costs for employers, harming businesses and consumers. In fact, the American Action Forum just released its economic study of the PRO Act on January 21, 2020. The study details the costs of some of the bill’s main provisions. For example, the independent contractor provision could affect 8.5% of the GDP and cost between $3.5 billion and $12.1 billion annually. The joint employer provision would cost between $17.2 billion and $33.3 billion annually for the franchise business sector and affect 44% of private sector employees. Finally, the provision that restricts employers from replacing strikers permanently could cost employers an additional $1.9 billion every year.

Despite these large costs for workers and businesses, the top Democrat 2020 Presidential candidates are supporters of this legislation. Former Vice President Joe Biden states on his campaign website his support for the bill, and Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are co-sponsors of the Senate version of the PRO Act. Similarly, Pete Buttigieg also praises the PRO Act on his campaign website.

ATR and CWF, however, support American workers and the businesses that hire our workers, and we strongly oppose this legislation.