Unions want Democrats' reconciliation package, and they want it bad - Politico

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FULL THROTTLE: Unions are spending liberally and lobbying fiercely in an effort to get Democrats’ multitrillion-dollar social spending package across the finish line.

The motivator: The legislation would create millions of jobs, many with pro-union stipulations that could boost membership. But on top of that, it also includes several provisions — many drafted with the help of union lobbyists — that would make it easier for workers to organize, like giving the National Labor Relations Board sharper teeth and empowering it to conduct union elections online. Both of those policies are also included in the Protecting the Right to Organize Act — an overhaul of U.S. labor law Democrats drafted to resuscitate tapering union membership, which is currently stalled in the Senate.

Big spenders: Unions were unable to provide specific numbers on how much they’ve spent on advertising backing the package, in part because the cash often went toward much broader campaigns. But some digging by your host found that AFT, the AFL-CIO's largest affiliate, has spent more than six figures on ads supporting the bill. NEA, also one of the nation's biggest unions, spent seven figures on a digital ad campaign promoting the legislation, along with other bills. And SEIU announced Sept. 14 that it is doubling the amount of money it’s spending on TV and digital ads from $3.5 million to $7 million. (The union is also part of a coalition behind a $10 million campaign supporting the White House’s broader infrastructure proposal.)

In their words: “Labor is not only all over supporting it, it has helped craft it,” American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten told your host. "We're going to fight like hell in this homestretch," SEIU President Mary Kay Henry said in another interview.

Zoom out: The text has yet to overcome a significant hurdle: the Byrd rule, which allows only spending-related legislation to move through the reconciliation process that Democrats intend to use to pass the bill. Should it survive, how much the language in the spending bill could really boost union membership remains to be seen. Even a best-case scenario would likely fall short of the organized labor renaissance Biden campaigned on. And unions are still spending heavily to get the PRO Act passed, a sign of acquiescence that broader reform will still be necessary. Yet labor experts on both sides of the employer-worker spectrum say that, if enacted, the provisions will be the biggest pro-union change to U.S. labor law since the National Labor Relations Act in 1935.

On the Hill

LIBERALS TAKE THE WHEEL: The House returns today for a pivotal two-week session that begins with a vote on a stopgap funding measure to avert a government shutdown and will come to a head with consideration of lawmakers’ bipartisan infrastructure deal alongside Democrats’ multitrillion-dollar social spending package.

But leadership’s ambitious timeline could be sabotaged by its own party: Progressive Democrats are quietly mulling whether to tank the bipartisan infrastructure package when it hits the House floor if they don’t get explicit reassurance that the party’s mammoth social spending legislation will also see enactment, our Hill team reports.

Not messing around: “Even if there were Republicans that come along" to help the Senate infrastructure bill pass the House this month, said Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), "we will have more individuals, more Democrats who are going to vote it down without the reconciliation bill." Jayapal said more than half of her 96-member caucus has privately indicated they’re willing to block the bipartisan Senate bill without their party-line bill in tow — far more than the roughly two dozen liberals who have gone public with their threat.

Reality check: Many Democrats are skeptical about defeating a major Biden priority — even temporarily.

MORE HILL NEWS: “Hoyer: House will vote to avoid debt default, shutdown next week,” from POLITICO

Around the Agencies

KEEPING UP WITH MARTY: Your hosts sat down with Labor Secretary Marty Walsh on Friday to chat about the agency’s work on job training, mask mandates, paid leave and more. Here’s what he had to say:

On worker shortages: “It’s lack of good child care for families — that are single mothers or single parents or two-parent families — that have no child care. That seems to be the biggest concern that people have with coming back to the workforce. The second part of that is the pandemic. I think people are still concerned about the Delta variant.”

On reports that senators may slash the president’s requested funds for workforce development: “For every dollar [lawmakers] cut back on job training, we will feel that impact in the American workforce somewhere in the future. We are at a turning point now in our country: We're coming out of a pandemic, lots of people are not going back to their old job, they don't want to go back to their old job, they want to do something new, they want to be challenged.” And “the only way you do that is by skilling people.”

On an upcoming DOL regulation requiring certain private-sector employers mandate the vaccine: “It’s a mandate, but it’s not per se a mandate that everyone’s like: ‘You either get the vaccine or get fired.’ That’s not what we’re doing here. We’re looking at companies over 100 that their employees need to get vaccinated, and if they don’t, they have to get tested. If someone comes down with Covid while they’re working on a job site and they’re getting tested on a weekly basis, you can catch it before the spread happens.”

On what the White House wants to see out of a paid leave program: “I don’t think there’s a lot of energy against it. I just think that we have to find the right vehicle to move forward. I can't speak to where it is in this process. I know that there are some reconciliation issues around the parliamentarian.”

MORE AGENCY NEWS: “Retirement plan advisers expect Labor Department rules to boost ESG options,” from Roll Call

In the Workplace

YET ANOTHER BLOW TO WORKING WOMEN: Women in the workforce are bracing for a new hit to their incomes and careers as the pandemic jeopardizes plans to keep kids in school full time, our Megan Cassella reports.

High expectations: “After 18 months of shutdowns, online learning and canceled summer camps, the return to classrooms was supposed to be a turning point for women, whose participation in the labor force plunged to its lowest level in more than three decades during the pandemic,” she writes. “But as Covid-19 cases rose in the summer, more than 40,000 women dropped out of the labor force between July and August, even as Americans flocked back to work.” Men returned to the job at more than three times that rate.

Policy ramifications: The data has “lent new ammunition to the Biden administration and Democratic lawmakers in their push to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to overhaul the nation’s child care industry to make it more accessible and affordable.” Doing so, they say, is the only way to get families back on track.

Across the aisle: Republicans maintain that the proposal’s $450 billion price tag is far too steep. Democrats, they say, are attempting to destroy a private-sector industry in order to erect a more expensive, government-run one.

RELATED: “‘‘The pay is absolute crap’: Child-care workers are quitting rapidly, a red flag for the economy,” from The Washington Post

Unions

FIRST IN SHIFT: The AFL-CIO plans to release a report Tuesday in collaboration with Energy Futures Initiative on how to erect clean energy infrastructure in the Ohio River Valley region that preserves and creates union jobs.

Some background: The report is dedicated to former AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, who was from the Ohio River Valley region and died unexpectedly earlier this year. It’s the product of a July workshop that convened government, labor and industry leaders to discuss hydrogen and carbon capture and storage projects in the region.

Big takeaway: “Preserving jobs in the industrial heartland while driving down U.S. emissions has often been deemed nearly impossible,” the report reads. But “growing innovation supported by decades of research and development” means “the United States now has a once-in-a-generation opportunity.”

Tune in: AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler is slated to speak along with Walsh at the annual Climate Jobs Summit Tuesday.

SEIU TAKES ON TRUMP’S JOINT EMPLOYER RULE: The SEIU filed a lawsuit Friday challenging a Trump-era NLRB rule that makes it harder for companies employing franchisee and contract workers to be held liable as so-called joint employers.

Their thinking: “The Trump Board’s joint employer rule lets companies that control these workers’ health and safety conditions escape the responsibility to bargain,” SEIU President Mary Kay Henry said in a statement. “This is both shameful and illegal, and SEIU will fight to have the rule struck down.”

What We're Reading

— “Why the Empire State Building, and New York, May Never Be the Same,” from The New York Times

— “Miners Labor to Find Enough Truck Drivers, Workers,” from The Wall Street Journal

— “Fast-food customers are back, but workers are not. It’s triggering major change,” from The Washington Post

— “Walgreens Boots heaps bonuses, rewards for pharmacists amid labor shortage,” from Reuters

— “Employers say 'ghosting coasting' is a growing problem, but workers have their reasons for quietly walking away from a job,” from Business Insider

— “Evergrande Gave Workers a Choice: Loan Us Cash or Lose Your Bonus,” from The New York Times

— “In The Fight Against COVID, Health Workers Aren't Immune To Vaccine Misinformation,” from NPR

— “Taliban-run Kabul municipality to female workers: Stay home,” from the Associated Press

— “Companies Use Overtime to Solve Worker Shortages. That May Cost Them More Workers,” from The Wall Street Journal

— “Firms urged to protect workers from abuse in ‘wild west’ UK gig economy,” from The Guardian

— “Inflation, a labor crunch and the delta variant pressure restaurants heading into fall, survey finds,” from CNBC

THAT’S ALL FOR MORNING SHIFT!

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Unions want Democrats' reconciliation package, and they want it bad - Politico
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