Protecting the Right to Organize Act of 2021

Floor Speech

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Ms. TITUS. Mr. Speaker, I stand in favor of the PRO Act. And what a perfect acronym it is, because this bill is, indeed, proworker, procapitalism, proeconomic recovery, profamily, prowomen, just pro- American.

I am proud to represent a State with a large union presence, a large organized labor presence that has over 161,000 union members, just as I am proud to vote for this bill.

We have seen firsthand how unions enable workers to have better pay, better benefits, better working conditions. Unions also help address the gender wage gap and promote diversity. Indeed, they are the tide that lifts all ships; yet, across the country, the right to unionize has come under assault.

In the face of these attacks, the PRO Act is the strongest upgrade to workers' collective bargaining rights in nearly a century.

It will empower workers to exercise their rights and hold employers accountable when they try to stand in the way.

I include in the Record a letter from UNITE HERE also in support of the PRO Act.

Unitehere!,
Office of the Presiden,Las Vegas, NV, March 9, 2021.
Re Support the PRO Act (H.R. 842).
House of Representatives, Washington, DC.

Dear Representative: I urge you to support the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, H.R. 842. Like President Biden, the workers we organize in the casino, hotel, and food service industries believe the union is the path to the middle class. The PRO Act will remove many obstacles to joining a union and achieving a union contract through collective bargaining. It will give millions of workers a real opportunity to lift up themselves and their families into the American middle class.

One of the most significant provisions of the PRO Act is to introduce meaningful, enforceable penalties for breaking federal labor law. President Biden has spoken forcefully for the need to hold corporate executives personally accountable for interfering in union elections and violating other labor laws. We should hold corporate decision makers personally responsible in order to protect employees against illegal anti-union actions just as we hold executives responsible in order to protect investors against illegal financial reporting practices under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

In Las Vegas, workers at the Station Casinos chain have fought for over a decade to unionize. These workers--cooks, food servers, bartenders, cocktail servers, porters, hotel housekeepers--have seen their efforts thwarted every step of the way by Station Casinos. The company and its two billionaire owners have faced little consequence for the company's long-running anti-union campaign of threats, intimidation, promises, and other interference in employees' efforts to exercise their right to join a union as well as Trumpian refusals to recognize workers' democratic decisions to unionize without costly litigation. The experience of Station Casinos workers shows exactly why it is vitally important to pass the PRO Act to provide for real penalties to corporate and executive wrongdoing when it comes to worker rights.

In September 2012, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that Station Casinos broke the law dozens of times in its initial response to worker organizing at its Las Vegas casinos. As a remedy, the NLRB required the company to post a notice at all its properties promising not to do so again. Given this mere slap on the wrist by the government, it is perhaps unsurprising that Station Casinos would continue to use certain of the same tactics to oppose unionization that it promised it would not engage in.

Notwithstanding their employer's opposition, Station Casinos workers persevered and won NLRB-conducted representation elections at several of the companies' properties. They did so amidst Station Casinos' ongoing anti- union campaign: at Boulder Station, 67% of workers voted Yes to joining the union in September 2016; 78% voted Yes for the union at Green Valley Ranch Casino in November 2017; 83% voted Yes at Palms Casino in April 2018; 82% voted Yes at Sunset Station in June 2019; 85% voted Yes at Fiesta Rancho Casino in June 2019; and 57% voted Yes at Fiesta Henderson Casino in September 2019.

But these election victories have not led to bargaining victories. Station Casinos refused to accept the results of several of these landslide results. Instead it mounted a time-consuming litigation campaign through the NLRB and, in two instances, the courts, seeking to overturn workers' democratic choices. It did so despite public statements that it would respect the results of NLRB elections.

Even after Station Casinos stopped litigating election results and started to negotiate with the union, it has made massive unilateral changes in what the Union alleges is an effort to frustrate the possibility of reaching collective bargaining agreements. While the Union expects that the NLRB's Acting General Counsel's office will do everything in his power to address these alleged unfair labor practices, he still has no better remedies available to him than when Station Casinos was first cited with lawbreaking in 2012.

Years of facing no real consequences culminated in a frenzied campaign by Station Casinos to stop workers at its largest property, Red Rock Resort, from voting for the union in December 2019. The company's action was so brazen and egregious that the NLRB is currently seeking a rare federal court injunction against it. But it should not have gotten to this point for there to be potentially real consequences for a company that repeatedly breaks federal labor law. Recidivism should have consequences.

Station Casinos has been able to attack its employee's federal rights to organize and collectively bargain for years with impunity because the company and its decision makers-- ultimately its billionaire owners--have not had to pay, literally and figuratively, for management's breaking the law, denying workers' right to organize, and refusing to recognize the democratic decision to unionize.

The PRO Act would begin to change this unfair situation by putting real teeth into the National Labor Relations Act, including permitting the NLRB to impose personal liability on corporate directors and officers who participate in violations of workers' rights or have knowledge of and fail to prevent such violations. This and other changes are necessary to change the anti-union behavior of those who are insulated from the consequences of lawbreaking by their enormous amount of legal and other resources at their disposal.

Real monetary penalties and personal liability--including jail time, as President Biden has argued--are what will make corporate decision makers understand that it is the national policy of the United States, enshrined in the National Labor Relations Act, to encourage unionization and collective bargaining. With the PRO Act, we can begin to modernize our legal system to advance American workers' rights to organize and collectively bargain in accordance with that national policy.

I urge you to vote Yes on the PRO Act.
Sincerely,
D. Taylor, President.

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