• Hold corporations and executives personally accountable for interfering with organizing efforts and violating other labor laws.
• Aggressively pursue employers who violate labor laws, participate in wage theft, or cheat on their taxes by intentionally misclassifying employees as independent contractors.
• Ensure federal dollars do not flow to employers who engage in union-busting activities, participate in wage theft, or violate labor law.
• Penalize companies that bargain in bad faith.

ENCOURAGE AND INCENTIVIZE UNION ORGANIZING AND COLLECTIVE BARGAINING

• Make it easier for workers who choose to unionize to do so. Today, workers face an uphill battle of anti-union intimidation and intense employer opposition when trying to organize a union. And, too many employers are able to “run out the clock” on negotiating an initial collective bargaining agreement. Biden strongly supports the provisions of the PRO Act that address union organizing, as well as additional aggressive remedies that will:
  • ban employers’ mandatory meetings with their employees, including captive audience meetings in which employees are forced to listen to anti-union rhetoric;
  • reinstate and codify into law the Obama-Biden Administration’s “persuader rule” requiring employers to report not only information communicated to employees, but also the activities of third-party consultants who work behind the scenes to manage employers’ anti-union campaigns;
  • codify into law the Obama-Biden era’s NLRB rules allowing for shortened timelines of union election campaigns; and
  • stop employers from stalling initial negotiations with newly formed unions.

A co-sponsor of the original Employee Free Choice Act, Biden supports workers choosing to form a union if a majority signs authorization cards empowering a union to represent them. He will go beyond the PRO Act by allowing workers to use this process, called “card check,” as an initial option for forming a union, not merely an option granted when the employer has illegally interfered in the election process.

• Provide a federal guarantee for public sector employees to bargain for better pay and benefits and the working conditions they deserve.
• Ban state laws prohibiting unions from collecting dues or comparable payments from all workers who benefit from union representation that unions are legally obligated to provide.
• Create a cabinet-level working group that will solely focus on promoting union organizing and collective bargaining in the public and private sectors.
• Ensure workers can bargain with the employer that actually holds the power, including franchisors, and ensure those employers are accountable for guaranteeing workplace protections. During the Obama-Biden Administration, the NLRB issued the landmark Browning-Ferris Industries decision. If allowed to stand, this decision would allow unions to collectively bargain with the employer that actually controls their wages, benefits and working conditions — which is often not the staffing agency or the franchisee, but a large corporation or franchisor like McDonald’s. The Trump Administration and Trump’s handpicked NLRB majority proposed reversing this decision. As president, Biden will enact legislation codifying the Browning-Ferris Industries joint employer definition into law, as called for in the PRO Act, and restoring the broad definition of joint employment to wage and hour law.
• Ensure that workers can exercise their right to strike without fear of reprisal.
• Empower the National Labor Relations Board to fulfill its intended purpose of protecting workers.
• Reinstate and expand protections for federal employees.
• Expand long overdue rights to farmworkers and domestic workers.
• Extend the right to organize and bargain collectively to independent contractors. Some workers are correctly classified as independent contractors, but are not very different from employees. They bring only their labor, and perhaps a small amount of capital investment, to the organization with which they do business. These workers lack individual bargaining power and, as a result, are at grave risk of exploitation by big business. Biden supports modifying antitrust law and guaranteeing that these independent contractors can organize and bargain collectively for their mutual protection and benefit.

ENSURE THAT ALL WORKERS ARE TREATED WITH DIGNITY AND RECEIVE THE PAY, BENEFITS, AND WORKPLACE PROTECTIONS THEY DESERVE

• Increase the federal minimum wage to $15. As Vice President, Biden helped get state and local laws increasing the minimum wage across the finish line – including in New York State – and has supported eliminating the tipped minimum wage. He firmly believes all Americans are owed a raise, and it’s well past time we increase the federal minimum wage to $15 across the country. This increase would include workers who aren’t currently earning the minimum wage, like the farmworkers who grow our food and domestic workers who care for our aging and sick and for those with disabilities. As president, Biden will also support indexing the minimum wage to the median hourly wage so that low-wage workers’ wages keep up with those of middle income workers.
• Invest in communities by widely applying and strictly enforcing prevailing wages.
• Stop employers from denying workers overtime pay they’ve earned.
• Eliminate non-compete clauses and no-poaching agreements that hinder the ability of employees to seek higher wages, better benefits, and working conditions by changing employers.
• Put an end to unnecessary occupational licensing requirements. W
• Increase workplace safety and health.
• Ensure workers can have their day in court by ending mandatory arbitration clauses imposed by employers on workers.
• Expand protections for undocumented immigrants who report labor violations.