Imagine that an employer wants to award a spot bonus to a high-performing employee but isn’t allowed to. Or that an employee who deserves a raise for working hard learns that such increases are prohibited. Scenarios such as these expose the many downsides of the outdated model of collective bargaining, which sets not only a floor but also a ceiling for wages.
And they’re just one example of the barriers that the new Employee Rights Act of 2022 would eliminate.
Sponsored by Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), the bill aims to remove limitations and bolster protections for American workers. It modernizes labor laws to reward hard work and safeguard employees’ rights at the workplace. It recognizes the needs of today’s gig workers and supports small business owners who launch a franchise. And it reinforces commonsense democratic ideals, such as a private vote on who represents workers on the job.
First introduced more than a decade ago, the revamped bill emerged in response to Democrats’ Protecting Workers’ Right to Organize, or PRO Act. For a sense of how the two rival bills measure up, consider the following.
The Employee Rights Act would guarantee workers a secret-ballot election when a union tries to organize them. The PRO Act, on the other hand, would allow election results to be thrown out by unelected members of a federal labor board and instead be organized via card check, a petition process marred by union intimidation.
The Employee Rights Act would allow benefits for the...
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