Earlier this week, Senator Bill Cassidy (R-L.A.), chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, unveiled a transformative set of bills that, if passed, would substantially modify the National Labor Relations Act, help stabilize federal labor law from administration to administration, and make union organizing more challenging for the union side.
The proposed legislation includes six separate, but related, bills. Below is a brief summary of each of them:
- Worker Reforming Elections for Speedy and Unimpeded Labor Talks (RESULTS) Act: This bill makes a number of changes to federal labor law. The most significant is that it seeks to require secret ballot elections, and prohibits card-check recognition as a means to certify a union’s representation of a bargaining unit. The asserted purpose of this change is to mitigate the risk of influence or intimidation over the employee’s ballot. This bill also seeks to require that at least 2/3 of the bargaining unit cast votes in order for the election to be valid.
- NLRB Stability Act: This bill requires the NLRB to adhere to controlling authority issued by the federal court of appeals in which the unfair labor practice allegedly occurred, which could help address the challenge for employers to keep up with the changing legal landscape under new Board composition and leadership through each presidential administration, as we have routinely written about over the years (see, for example, here and here).
- Fairness in Filing Act: Under current law, a party filing an unfair labor practice charge is not required to make any evidentiary showing to support the accusations in the charge. This bill would require a party filing an unfair labor practice (ULP) charge to attach or describe the supporting evidence, a heightened threshold showing which would likely reduce the number of ULP charges filed. This bill would also impose monetary penalties for filing a ULP charge frivolously or in bad faith, another attempt to limit the use of ULP charges by unions for improper purposes.
- Union Members Right to Know Act: This bill would require unions to disclose any spending unrelated to collective bargaining activities. Workers would also be expressly entitled to opt out of their dues being spent on nonrepresentational activities under this bill. The bill also requires unions to inform their members of these and other rights.
- Protection on the Picket Line Act: This bill, co-sponsored by Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, was introduced to clarify that the NLRA does not nullify anti-discrimination laws and that employees who face harassment or abuse during picketing or protests based on their protected class have the same rights as any other employee facing such conduct. The bill allows employers to take disciplinary action against an employee for harassment or abuse without engaging in an unfair labor practice unless the NLRB General Counsel can show (1) the employee was engaging in protected Section 7 activity and (2) the employer knew of that activity and improperly acted against the employee because of that activity.
- Worker Privacy Act: This bill would require an employer to turn over a voter list with employee names and contact information to the union before an election, consistent with current law. However, the bill adds provisions that require the union to take specific steps to protect the information and to prohibit the union from using that personal employee information for any purpose other than union organizing.
This is a very aggressive package that involves significant changes to current law. It is likely to be heavily opposed by Democrats and the union lobby (one union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, has already posted on X urging Senator Cassidy’s Committee to consider more bipartisan legislation). This reform legislation is also likely to be opposed by Senator Josh Hawley’s growing pro-union GOP populist coalition. Senator Hawley is also an influential member of the Senate HELP Committee. In the view of the authors, all of this opposition is likely to make this legislation difficult to pass, without modifications.
Of course, we will update you on the progress of this legislation. We will also continue to report on what union and non-union employers should do in anticipation of significant changes in labor relations legislation, if such changes become clearer and closer to reality.
If you are an employer with questions about union-management relations issues, please contact the authors (Desiree J. Ho or Mark S. Spring)of this article or any member of CDF’s Traditional Labor Law Practice Group.
