As labor regulators fight for increased funding for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and activists wrap up a watershed year for the labor movement, new polling finds that a majority of voters support the movement’s goals and are in favor of upping the agency budget and increasing penalties for employers that violate labor laws.
A survey of over 1,300 likely voters, released this week by Data for Progress, finds that 57 percent of respondents support increasing the NLRB’s budget, with 16 percent saying they “strongly” support a budget boost. Support is strongest among Democrats, with 73 percent in favor, though a majority of independents and a plurality of Republicans also support a budget increase.
The findings suggest that it would be popular for members of Congress to heed labor advocates and the NLRB’s calls to increase the agency’s budget. The labor board hasn’t had a budget increase in nine years — meaning that, with inflation, the budget has been effectively cut by 25 percent, thanks to conservative opposition to funding labor regulators.
This week, lawmakers unveiled $25 million of new funding for the board in the omnibus government funding bill, which the NLRB union says will be just enough to keep the agency running. But it is still far from what is needed to restore the staffing cuts that the NLRB has suffered and for the agency to handle the increased demand from the flourishing labor movement.
Data for Progress also found that an overwhelming majority of voters support increasing penalties on companies that violate labor laws. The poll shows that three in four voters support making employers pay $50,000 to $100,0000 in fines when they violate labor laws, with 83 percent of Democrats, 70 percent of independents, and 71 percent of Republicans in favor.
Currently, employers face little to no penalties for breaking labor laws, with fines limited to provisions like providing back pay to workers who were illegally fired, which roughly equates to the regular cost of doing business. This allows employers to essentially violate labor laws with impunity, empowering them to trample over workers’ rights; the Economic Policy Institute found that, in 2016 and 2017, over 40 percent of employers were charged with violating federal law in union campaigns.
This impunity has been on full display in current major union campaigns. Starbucks, for instance, has fired over 150 pro-union workers in just the past year in response to Starbucks Workers United’s union campaign. Though judges and the NLRB have repeatedly found the company to have unlawfully fired the workers in retaliation for supporting the union campaign, the company is still firing workers, likely viewing the tactic as financially worth it if they can dissuade workers from unionizing.
Labor activists have called for labor laws to be more punitive in order to meaningfully deter companies from using illicit anti-worker tactics. The proposal to impose civil fines on violating employers is included in the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, and is one solution backed by unions and worker advocates. The PRO Act, which has passed the House but not the Senate, would also give workers the option to file a civil suit against an employer that has violated their rights.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment. We are presently looking for 98 new monthly donors before midnight tonight.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy