HELP Subcommittee Holds Hearing on Protecting Workers’ Rights

A major contributor to the middle class squeeze is the decline in workers’ freedom to organize and collectively bargain.  Organized workers earn more, have greater access to healthcare benefits, and are more likely to have guaranteed pensions than unorganized workers.  When workers get their fair share, the economy benefits and the middle class grows stronger.  Yet the freedom to organize and collectively bargain has been under severe assault in recent decades, thanks to weak federal labor laws in dire need of reform.  It has also been rolled back by a number of misguided decisions by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in the last few years.  This is why I recently held a hearing in the HELP Subcommittee to find a legislative solution to this problem.

Last year, the NLRB issued a trio of decisions, often collectively referred to as the “Kentucky River” decisions, which eviscerated the meanings of “employee” and “supervisor” under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).  The NLRA protects employees’ freedom to organize and collectively bargain.  Supervisors are not considered employees and are therefore not covered by the Act’s protections.  If an individual is determined to be a supervisor, she has no right to organize, no right to engage in concerted activity with her fellow employees, and no right to collectively bargain.  Every fundamental right protected by the Act may turn on this question of whether she is a supervisor or an employee.  The Kentucky River decisions dramatically expanded the definition of supervisor far beyond the limits that the authors of the act intended and far beyond the limits of common sense.  In so doing, it stripped an estimated 8 million workers – particularly skilled and professional employees – of the freedom to organize.

To address this problem, I have introduced “Re-empowerment of Skilled and Professional Employees and Construction and Tradesworkers (RESPECT) Act” this Congress.  The RESPECT Act serves to restore that freedom by addressing a series of decisions which stray dramatically from and undermine the original intent of the National Labor Relations Board and which fly in the face of common sense.  This bill provides clarity in the NLRA on one aspect of the fundamental question of coverage:  who is an employee and who is a supervisor. The RESPECT Act is necessary to protect employees, and its passage this year is essential to protecting millions of workers rights and protections.

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