Today, the House of Representatives passed the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, a critical step toward restoring workers’ right to organize and bargain collectively. This fundamental right has been eroded for decades as employers exploit weaknesses in the current law and lobby the government to weaken current protections. Further, employers often interfere with workers’ right to organize, and face no real consequences for doing so. The result has been stagnant wage growth, unsafe workplaces, and rising inequality.

The PRO Act helps restore workers’ right to join together to bargain for better wages and working conditions by streamlining the process when workers form a union, ensuring that they are successful in negotiating a first agreement, and holding employers accountable when they violate labor law. The PRO Act also helps advance racial economic justice because unions and collective bargaining help shrink the Black–white wage gap and bring greater fairness to the workplace. This legislation finally helps bring U.S. labor law into the 21st century—giving working people more power to counteract rising corporate power and inequality and helping create a just economy as our nation builds out of the pandemic. The Senate should pass the PRO Act immediately and ensure that all workers have a voice on the job.