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President Joe Biden has created a task force to find ways to leverage government power to increase union membership. Vice President Kamala Harris and Labor Secretary Marty Walsh will lead the task force composed of more than twenty Cabinet and agency heads. 

Make no mistake about it – Biden’s labor task force is nothing but a last-ditch lifeline to humiliated union bosses, and American workers will pay the price. 

Within 180 days, the task force must provide recommendations on two issues:

  • How to use existing legislation or government power to increase union membership

  • What future policies need to be imposed to increase union membership

Whatever recommendations the task force provides will be unlikely to stop the membership bleed organized labor has suffered over the past five decades. In 1954, 34.8 percent of American workers were in a union – in 2020, just 10.8 percent of workers were unionized.

Unions have continued to take a beating during the Biden presidency, despite Biden’s promise to be the “most pro-union president you’ve ever seen.” Organized labor’s most recent embarrassment was a crushing loss in Bessemer, Alabama, where 71 percent of Amazon warehouse workers voted against unionization. The final tally was a lopsided 1,798 votes against unionization to 738 votes for unionization.

One of the task force’s top recommendations will likely be passage of the “Protecting the Right to Organize” (PRO) Act, the left’s other lifeline to Big Labor. 

The PRO Act is a grab-bag of liberal provisions designed to screw over American workers. Key provisions would: 

  • Violate worker privacy by forcing employers to give union organizer sensitive employee contact information, including home addresses, cell phone and landline numbers, and email addresses. This would allow union bosses to intimidate workers into joining unions at homes or workplaces.

  • Nullify state Right-to-Work laws, which protect 166 million Americans in 27 states from being forced to pay union dues just to get a job.

  • Change union elections to allow union bosses to collect cards from workers to demonstrate support for the union, rather than holding a secret ballot election.

  • Nationalize California’s “ABC” test for independent contractors, which has forced the mass reclassification of California’s independent contractors and limited freelance opportunities statewide. More than 57 million freelancers could risk losing work if the ABC test were adopted at the federal level.

  • Codify the expanded joint employer standard, severely harming franchises and their employees.

  • Codify shortened representation election time frames, giving the unions a large advantage in these elections by shortening the time for debate over unionization.

The fact is, American workers just aren’t buying what unions are selling, and haven’t for decades. The Biden labor task force’s mission is to figure out how to use government power to force as many Americans into unions as possible.