The PRO Act Week of Action continued with a virtual rally to pass the PRO Act! Wisconsin workers are energized to continue to urge the Senate to pass the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act.
We heard from U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin on how she is working with her colleagues to bring this vital legislation to promote worker rights to the Senate floor. Senator Baldwin is an original co-sponsor of the PRO Act.
“Unions close the wage gap for people of color, for women. Unions protect essential workers and provide better benefits like healthcare and paid leave,” Senator Baldwin told the rally. “Union membership is declining in part because big business is getting better at undermining our union drives. They’ve used their money and their lobbying to change our labor laws to be more accommodating to big businesses. That’s why we need to pass the PRO Act.”
Give Senator Ron Johnson a call and let him know you support advancing worker rights with the PRO Act at 1-866-832-1560.
Hillary Laskonis and Warren Enstrom who have recently organized with their co-workers for union rights at Colectivo Coffee and the Milwaukee Art Museum spoke at the rally about their experience organizing.
Hillary Laskonis, a café worker and barista in the Riverwest neighborhood of Milwaukee, who has been organizing in tandem with the IBEW detailed captive audience meetings, personal attacks on union organizers, unfair discipline and even unjust termination from the company explaining, “we weren’t expecting to encounter the level of retaliation we experienced. Colectivo hired the most aggressive and well-known union-busting firm to fight us every step of the way.”
Talking with fellow workers in the industry, Laskonis found that “workers desperately need and want for our workplaces to be organized yet so few campaigns are successful because companies will spare no expense to crush worker-led union efforts.”
“The PRO Act will allow worker solidarity to grow even stronger,” explained Warren Enstrom a IAMAW Local Lodge 66 member at the Milwaukee Art Museum who noted strong solidarity across job responsibilities within the museum as a key to a successful union drive. “It should be up to workers to democratically choose if we want a union. The PRO Act gets us there.”
Gordon Lafer, an economist and professor of labor studies at the University of Oregon, explained why the PRO Act is “the single most important thing we can do to address economic insecurity.”
“If we want to know what the PRO Act can do for America. We can look at American companies that operate in countries that have laws like the PRO Act,” said Professor Lafer. “What we find is workers there have better wages, better retirement, paid parental leave and paid vacation. This is because they have labor laws that truly protect the right to organize."
“This week of action is just the beginning,” said Stephanie Bloomindale, President of the Wisconsin AFL-CIO. “We aren’t going to rest until the PRO Act is passed, until workers are respected and we have the full freedom to collectively bargain and organize in union free of fear and coercion.”
Write a letter, send emails, make a call, send a tweet and let your Senators know that workers are calling for action on the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act. Call 1-866-832-1560 and let Senator Ron Johnson know you support the PRO Act.
As President Joe Biden said Wednesday night, “the middle class built America and unions built the middle class.”
If we want to have a strong, healthy American middle class, we need strong, thriving unions.
That means empowering workers by passing the PRO Act.
“The PRO Act is more than labor law reform, it’s civil rights legislation to close racial and gender wage gaps, and to ensure dignity and due process for workers, regardless of where we were born, who we are or what type of work we do,” said Robert Kraig, Executive Director of Citizen Action of Wisconsin. “The PRO Act is important for all workers, especially those who have been marginalized.
Patrick Zastrow, who is organizing a union with his coworkers at Colectivo Coffee, described the anti-union playbook workers face when organizing. “We’ve been trying to organize a union in coordination with the IBEW for about a year,” explained Zastrow. “Since then, we’ve been facing very coordinated and serious resistance from the owners of Colectivo. Only through workers having a seat at the table can Colectivo Coffee and other businesses be the forward-thinking and successful companies I know all parties want them to be.”
“The NAACP of Dane County Branch stands firmly in support of the PRO Act,” said Bill Franks, Labor and Industry Committee chair, NAACP Dane County Chapter #36AB. “We know that so called right to work laws are divisive and racist in their origins and intentions. These laws were created during the Jim Crow era and lead to lower wages, fewer benefits and more dangerous workplaces. The PRO Act will repeal right to work laws.”
Representative Chris Sinicki explained, “I am really proud to be one of the co-authors of this resolution. We all know that for years, Republicans in the legislature have put into place laws that have an adverse effect on working families, on diversity, on equality and on our economy. The PRO Act will do much to reverse their relentless attacks on working people in Wisconsin.”
RSVP for our virtual to pass the PRO Act with Senator Tammy Baldwin at wisaflcio.org/mobilize.
