Dear Chairman Walberg and Members of the House Education and Workforce Committee:
On behalf of the AFL-CIO’s 65 affiliate unions and the 15 million working people we represent, I urge you to oppose the following bills at the Committee’s upcoming markup: H.R. 8347, H.R. 6213, H.R. 5267, and H.R. 8781.
H.R. 8347, the Reinforcing Underserved, Rural, and Local (RURAL) Healthcare Act, would strip worker rights guaranteed under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) from doctors and advanced care practitioners working in urban and rural areas alike if their employment is limited by contract to a year or less. Even if these workers might qualify as exempt under the FLSA, they still deserve the FLSA’s other basic protections, including equal pay for equal work regardless of gender. And all workers deserve a voice on the job, the right to organize, and the right to collectively bargain. By exempting these workers from the NLRA, this bill would create a permanently non-union workforce and undermine the terms and conditions for all other practitioners as a result. We urge the Committee to preserve these workers’ fundamental rights and oppose this bill.
H.R. 6213, the Heat Workforce Standards Act, would prohibit the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) from finalizing, implementing, or enforcing a federal heat injury and illness prevention standard, or any substantially similar measure. Congress assigned OSHA the responsibility to protect workers from recognized hazards and employers to maintain a workplace free from recognized harm. Employers and workers benefit from standards that provide key requirements to address a workplace hazard. A strong OSHA heat standard would prevent 531 worker deaths and 16,027 worker illnesses each year. OSHA acknowledges that these numbers are a significant undercount as heat contributes to fatalities without being recorded as the primary cause. Leaving occupational heat exposure unaddressed in the workplace costs employers $7.8 billion each year. Employer-provided prevention measures using engineering controls, water, rest breaks, shade and other measures are widely accepted, feasible and necessary to save lives. This bill would not only prevent the agency’s strong 2024 proposed rule from being finalized; it also would prevent any future standard to protect workers from heat. Especially in light of increasingly hot temperatures across the country, year after year, making certain kinds of work increasingly dangerous without adequate standards and protections, we ask the Committee to stand up for workplace health and safety and oppose this bill.
H.R. 5267, the American Franchise Act, would codify the narrowest possible "direct and immediate control" standard for joint employment under the NLRA and FLSA, shielding giant franchisors from responsibility for the working conditions they impose while leaving small-business franchisees holding the bag. Franchisors routinely dictate staffing levels, scheduling software, operating hours, and performance standards through franchise agreements and brand requirements, but this bill would carve out those very practices from joint employer determinations. The result is a bill that lets corporate parents retain all the control while workers lose the ability to bargain with the party actually setting the terms of their jobs, and lets franchisors avoid FLSA liability even when their own business model causes wage theft, leaving small business owners to pay the bill. H.R. 5267 is anti-worker, anti-union, and anti-small-business, and the Committee should oppose it.
H.R. 8781, the Title IX Clarification Act, would strip Title IX protections from transgender and gender-nonconforming students by writing a flawed, biology-only definition of “sex” into federal law. Moreover, the bill offers no guidance on how schools should apply this narrowed definition of “sex” to determine whether a student “has, had, will have, or would have” a particular reproductive system that produces a particular gamete for fertilization. Title IX exists to guarantee every student a fair shot at education. H.R. 8781 narrows its protections, denying these students equal educational opportunity and thereby ensuring that systemic barriers to employment for these students persist, and should be rejected.
For these reasons, we urge you to oppose H.R. 8347, H.R. 6213, H.R. 5267, and H.R. 8781. Thank you for your attention.
Sincerely,
Jody Calemine
Director, Government Affairs