In March, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, or the PRO Act. The bill is now with the U.S. Senate and has been referred to the Senate’s Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions for review. With all the focus on the Biden administration’s infrastructure bill, the PRO Act hasn’t been getting too much attention. However, if passed, the PRO Act would drastically change the relationship between employers and unions by expanding protections related to employees’ rights to organize and collectively bargain in the workplace. It would be the biggest change in labor law in decades.
As currently written, the PRO Act opens the door to corporate officer liability for companies and executives that violate workers’ rights under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which handles workers’ rights to form, join, or assist unions and “engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid and protection.” The corporate officer liability is particularly concerning because it opens “director or officers” of employers to the same civil penalties of up to $50,000 for first-time violations. That fine could reach up to $100,000 for repeat violations if it’s found that “any director or officer of the employer who directed or committed the violation, had established a policy that led to such a violation, or had actual or constructive knowledge of and the authority to prevent the violation and failed to prevent the violation.”