Reprinted from The Canadian Law of Work Forum by Jonathan Levitan on August 27, 2020.
Joe Biden is officially the Democratic party’s nominee for President. He will challenge President Donald Trump in the US general election on November 3rd. If he wins, what would he do for unions and workers?
A growing chorus of voices now recognizes that US labor law is fundamentally broken. But, keeping with his reputation for political moderation, Biden’s labor law agenda is centered around his support for a law already supported by most Democrats that would provide incremental, yet very significant, improvements for American workers. But – perhaps recognizing the fundamental problems that labor law faces – Biden promises to study and consider more drastic changes.
Biden’s Legislative Agenda
Biden’s most significant short-term promise is that he has pledged to support and sign the Protecting the Right to Organize Act (PRO Act), which was passed earlier this year by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives but predictably died in the Republican-held Senate. If passed and signed into law, the PRO Act would be the most significant revision to the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) since the 1940s. But that only says so much, since there has been essentially no significant revision of American labor law since the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, which generally weakened protections for workers. …
