The Labor-Rights Legislation That Could Make Medicare for All a Reality
The PRO Act will give workers a stronger hand to organize around a bolder political agenda.
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The most monumental pro-labor legislation since the 1930s is a few co-sponsors shy of a majority in the Senate, and it’s tough to overstate what a big deal that is: The Protect the Right to Organize Act promises to largely revert the United States back to the friendlier New Deal era of labor law, before postwar Republican majorities moved to significantly tamp down organized labor with the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act. If passed, the law will make more workers eligible for collective bargaining, make unions easier to organize, limit the power of management to sabotage the process and punish those who do more harshly, deliver speedier contracts, and lend existing unions more muscle. The bill’s ultimate outlook is still a toss-up: While President Biden has affirmed his strong support of the bill, advocates will have to fight hard to clinch the Senate’s five Democratic holdouts, let alone to nuke the filibuster so that 50 votes is enough to carry the day.