Dear Representative:
On behalf of the 15 million workers and 65 affiliate unions of the AFL-CIO, we urge you to vote YES to pass the Faster Labor Contracts Act (H.R. 5408), the bipartisan legislation led by Representatives Donald Norcross and Pete Stauber.
American workers are being squeezed. Real wages of working people are not keeping up with rising costs, and labor's share of GDP relative to profits has reached a record low, not because there is no room for wages to grow, but because too many workers have been denied the ability to organize and bargain collectively. More than 50 million workers say they would join a union if they could. Union contracts close race and gender wage gaps, build the middle class, and lift wages across entire industries. Unions help ensure safety on the job, win working families access to high quality, affordable health care, and set the standard for a secure and dignified retirement. For all the obvious benefits that union contracts confer on workplaces and the economy as a whole, the law should make it easier, not harder, for workers to exercise their rights to form unions and collectively bargain.
Yet even when workers successfully win union representation, victory is too often followed by years of bad-faith delay. The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) imposes no time limit on reaching a first contract, and employers exploit that gap to stall negotiations, with first contracts currently averaging 458 days according to Bloomberg Law. The same companies that make deals for multibillion-dollar mergers in a matter of weeks can take months to offer a counterproposal on the simplest labor provision. This is not an accident; it is a strategy.
H.R. 5408 closes that loophole. The bill amends Section 8(d) of the NLRA to require employers to begin negotiating within 10 days of a union election. If no agreement is reached after 90 days, the dispute goes to mediation. If mediation fails after 30 days, it moves to binding arbitration. Evidence from comparable frameworks shows arbitration is rarely invoked; the possibility of a binding decision from an arbitration is itself a powerful incentive for good-faith bargaining.
Passing H.R. 5408 is an important first step toward the broader and needed labor law reforms contained in the full PRO Act. In the meantime, this bill will make an immediate difference for workers fighting to make their lives better and will help end the dilatory tactics of union busters. Please vote YES on H.R. 5408, including all procedural votes necessary to bring it to the floor.
Sincerely,
Jody Calemine
Director, Government Affairs