President Biden signed an executive order on Monday creating a White House Task Force to Promote Work Organization to harness the power of the federal government to reverse a decade-long decline in union membership.
The task force, led by Vice President Kamala Harris and populated by cabinet officials and senior White House advisers, will make recommendations on how the government can use the powers it has to help workers join and bargain collectively. New guidelines for achieving these goals are also recommended.
The administration noted that the National Labor Relations Act, the federal labor rights law of 1935, was specifically designed to encourage collective bargaining, but that the law had never been fully implemented in that regard. “No previous administration has taken a comprehensive approach to determining how the executive can advance the organization and collective bargaining of workers,” a White House statement said.
Unions have campaigned for the right to organize or PRO Act to be passed, prohibiting employers from holding compulsory anti-union meetings and fines for violating workers’ rights. (Workers can currently only receive so-called make-whole funds, such as back payments.) The House passed the measure in March and Mr Biden supports the legislation but faces great opportunities in the Senate.
The task force will focus, among other things, on helping the federal government encourage its own workers to join unions and bargain collectively, and find ways to make it easier for workers, especially women and people of color, to organize themselves in part and negotiate the country and in anti-union industries.
President Donald J. Trump signed a handful of executive orders designed to restrict union protection and bargaining rights for federal employees. The unions challenged the orders in court and Mr Biden revoked them shortly after he took office.
It is not entirely clear what kind of support the federal government could provide to workers who want to organize without changing the law, although some labor experts have argued that Mr Biden and his appointees could take administrative measures to allow workers to do so to negotiate industry base, known as sector negotiations. That would make it less necessary to win union elections from site to job, as is often the case today.
The Biden Task Force could also look at ways the government can use its procurement powers to promote union membership.
As a rule, the federal government is unlikely to refuse contracts to companies just because they are anti-union, said Anastasia Christman, an expert on government contracts with the National Employment Law Project, an employee advocacy group. However, in certain narrow cases, the government can use its leverage as a contractor to encourage companies to take a neutral stance on the organization.
For example, if a federal agency purchases medical gloves from an aggressively anti-union company, it could tell the company that “your vehement anti-labor practices have shown a higher risk of work disruption,” Ms. Christman said. She added that the agency may conclude, “We can’t have $ 15 million worth of purple gloves in a warehouse somewhere. We need to find a more reliable way to get this stuff. “
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April 26, 2021, 2:10 p.m. ET
Even before the task force was announced, many union leaders viewed Mr Biden as the most union-friendly president in generations. They cited his quick overthrow of Trump officials, whom they viewed as anti-labor, the tens of billions of dollars in support of union pension plans included in his pandemic relief law, and a video message during a recent union campaign at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama , warning employers not to coerce or threaten workers who choose to trade unions.
Many union officials have compared him positively to his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, who complained that he refused to loudly support the unions.
The task force comes at a particularly frustrating time for organized work. According to a 2020 Gallup poll, around two-thirds of Americans are in favor of unions, but a little over 6 percent of private sector workers belong to them.
Union leaders say the current labor law, which allows employers to satiate workers with anti-union messages and little punishment for employers who threaten or fire workers who want to join, makes union formation very difficult.
Many union officials have cited Amazon’s loss of the election, the results of which were announced earlier this month, as an example of the need to reform labor law and develop new organizational strategies.
Amazon said its employees chose not to join a union, and management lawyers say many employers have been more responsive to workers’ concerns over the years, making unions less necessary.
Mr. Biden’s task force will seek the views of union leaders, academics and workers and make their recommendations within 180 days.
Secretary of Labor Martin J. Walsh will serve as vice-chair of the group, which includes Secretary of the Treasury Janet L. Yellen, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, White House Economic Advisers Cecilia Rouse and Brian Deese, and White House Climate Adviser Gina McCarthy.
