“Whereas, in the results of national elections, whether the candidates elected are from the Republican or Democratic Party, the interests of Wall Street have been protected and advanced, while the interests of labor and working people have generally been set back.” Resolution 48 of the recent AFL-CIO convention includes harsh and unprecedented language that echoes the concerns of some working-class people across the United States. The current Republican administration has yet to deliver on its pro-labor promises such as increased wages and preventing jobs from going overseas, and the Democratic Party continues its support for neoliberal reforms. Thus, labor organizations are making their voices heard with criticisms such as Resolution 48. The Democratic Party, however, might have just the response to these accusations. On October 31, the Democrats added a pro-labor plank to their “Better Deal” platform. It includes a laundry list of policies meant to strengthen unions, improve collective bargaining, and, ultimately, protect workers. But for all the good these reforms claim to do, many commentators are signalling that it is a terrible move for the party and the workers it claims to protect.
First, it is necessary to understand the breadth of the labor plank in the Better Deal. On July 24, Democratic Party leaders gathered in the small town of Berryville, Virginia to deliver its new economic platform titled “A Better Deal,” harkening back to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal” programs, and meant to respond to criticisms being levelled at the party that they need a message beyond just opposition to Trump. The Better Deal platform includes policy suggestions that are aimed at improving the welfare of the American worker, ranging from raising the minimum wage to ensuring every American has access to high-speed internet. The platform has received many additions since its initial rollout, including the pro-labor policies. There are eight labor reforms in particular that the Better Deal promises.
The first of these reforms has two prongs: increase punitive measures against businesses that violate labor laws, and systematize a new classification of the joint employer. Citing a study that reports high levels of employer intimidation and coercion of employees trying to join unions, the platform promises to increase penalties for employers who attempt such practices, although the specificities of these heightened measures remain vague. The second prong of the Better Deal platform codifies the new joint-employer standard set by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in the Browning-Ferris decision, which upended decades of precedent by easing the definition of “joint-employer”, in turn empowering the collective bargaining power of employees classified as supervisors or independent contractors. In short, this makes it easier for workers to strike. Specifically, it would ban the permanent replacement of workers who choose to strike, and resurrect the practice of secondary strikes, in which workers from different companies strike in solidarity with each other. This practice was banned by the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947. The third policy is also relatively straightforward: if workers and their employers cannot agree on a contract, they will enter into mediation, and, as a last resort, binding arbitration. It would also permit contract provisions that prevent companies from doing business with companies that mistreat their workers, another practice that was tangentially banned by the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947. The fourth suggestion is to impose a wholesale ban on state “right-to-work” laws, which prevent unions from compelling new hires at their company to join their union. Fifth, the Better Deal platform will extend the same collective bargaining to public-sector employees (who are systematically denied in many states, despite public-sector unionization being much higher) as private-sector employees. Sixth, A Better Deal would drastically expand the power of the NLRB, giving all of their decisions the power of law until expiration, unless a court overrules them. Seventh, A Better Deal would compel the NLRB to cast aside union election results if an employer engages in “captive audience meetings,” which force all workers to attend meetings centered around the drawbacks of joining a union. Finally, the Better Deal platform would force employers that receive federal funding to positively inform workers of their ability to organize.
It is abundantly clear to any observer that this package of labor reforms is unlikely, if not impossible, to pass in a Republican-controlled federal government. So why, then, would the Democratic leadership go to such lengths to propose it? Their underlying motive is both singular and transparent: to court working-class voters. While the merits of this strategy will be tested in the looming 2018 midterm elections, there are a myriad of criticisms that suggest this approach may be ill-advised.
The labor reforms of the Better Deal platform have far-reaching implications for labor law and would fundamentally transform employer-employee relationships in the United States. However, their passage seems unlikely and their usefulness to curry political favor has been called into question. Additionally, these proposals might even be unnecessary, as the National Labor Relations Board has the power to overturn precedent in order to expand the power of organized labor. The future of the Better Deal platform and the newly added labor reforms remains to be seen, but the current proposals unequivocally point to a seismic shift in domestic politics that will shape policy for years to come.