NMHC Joins Voices Opposing PRO Act Labor Bill in Congress

The National Multifamily Housing Council has come out against a contentious piece of labor legislation that passed the US House of Representatives and currently is in the Senate. 

The NMHC joined other business organizations—including many in construction, manufacturing, retail, restaurants, transportation, and other industries—calling themselves the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, to send a letter to members of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

The letter called the bill “radical legislation would violate workers’ free choice and privacy rights, jeopardize industrial stability, cost millions of American jobs, threaten vital supply chains, and  greatly hinder our economic recovery from COVID-19.”

The NMHC’s concerns extend to provisions that would allow the National Labor Relations Board to “find joint employment relationship on indirect and reserved authority” and “impose binding arbitration on initial collective bargaining agreements.” The organization said these, and others, would be “detrimental to the multifamily industry.”

The PRO Act has been controversial since its initial debut in 2020, when the House passed the bill, but the then-Republican-controlled Senate refused to consider it. This year, organized labor has treated it as a must-pass, with AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka calling it “the most significant piece of legislation” that Congress will consider this year.

The legislation would modify the National Labor Relations Act, which governs union activity and organization. The stated intent is to push back changes made through the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act that restricted unions, like ending right-to-work laws and solidarity strikes.

But the legislation, as summarized by the House, arguably goes beyond reducing the impact of Taft-Hartley to confer powers unions didn’t previously have, including union organizers gaining access to personal contact information from companies and potentially restrict employer abilities to get labor relations advice.

The issue of joint employment relationships would potentially let the NLRB treat employees in franchised operations as working for both the franchisee and franchisor. Many workers would get reclassified through the so-called ABC test from being independent contractors to employees for union-related National Labor Relations Act purposes, proponents say. But according to management-side labor and employment litigation firm Littler, the NLRA can have much broader implications. Penalties for NLRA violations would be significantly expanded.

Currently, several Democratic senators have opposed the bill as written, making the ability to get enough votes to overcome a filibuster virtually impossible. But the Senate is also trying to include some aspects of the PRO Act in the infrastructure bill by focusing on financial penalties. Those would qualify for the Senate’s reconciliation process, which means a simple majority could pass legislation.