Teamsters union president Sean O’Brien testified before a Senate committee on Wednesday and expressed appreciation for Republican lawmakers’ efforts to reach out to labor unions and work with them on legislation.
O’Brien testified before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee at the invitation of Chairman Bill Cassidy, R-La., to discuss proposals for reforming labor laws.
“I’m encouraged that I’ve been invited here as a guest of the Republican majority, that is a positive change,” O’Brien said.
“For as long as I have been a Teamster, neither party has spearheaded an effort to reach bipartisan agreement on labor reform,” he explained. “The Democrats have played political football with massive labor reform bills. Republicans have largely reintroduced business friendly bills that make it harder to form a union.”
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“I don’t like to waste time. I was elected to get things done for rank and file Teamsters, to further solutions and not dwell on problems or the past. Everyone in this room was similarly elected to produce for your own constituents,” he added.
O’Brien said that this is the third time he’s testified before the Senate HELP committee and that neither Democratic nor GOP leaders of the panel were successful in advancing solutions to what he called “our nation’s weak, unenforceable labor laws.”
“When I took office, I directed the Teamsters Union’s legislative department to confront their own partisan bias. As a result, our union has found new allies on both sides of the aisle,” O’Brien said, pointing to Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., as a leader in those efforts.
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O’Brien said there is “a realignment around labor taking place within the Republican Party. The Teamsters union wants to encourage that by offering multiple paths to support our members, not a single legislative litmus test.”
As an example of that realignment and the newfound bipartisanship around labor issues, O’Brien pointed to a bipartisan bill introduced in March by Hawley along with Sens. Cory Booker, D-N.J.; Jeff Merkley, D-Ore.; Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio; and Gary Peters, D-Mich. Four additional Democratic senators have since signed on as cosponsors.
The Faster Labor Contracts Act would amend the National Labor Relations Act to require that employers must start negotiating with a newly-formed union within 10 days of workers’ unionization vote.
It would also refer the parties to binding arbitration if mediation fails within 30 days or additional periods agreed upon by the union and employer, and send disputes to mediation if no agreement is reached in 90 days.
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“After workers vote to form their union, many employers delay the negotiation of the initial collective bargaining agreement. Nearly half of new unions fail to secure a contract within a year of winning an election. After two years, a third are without a contract,” O’Brien explained. “This bill ensures that a first contract can be reached in months, not years.”
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., spoke of concerns raised by another expert witness at the hearing that the Faster Labor Contracts Act would interject bureaucracy into negotiations between employers and a newly-formed union.
Rachel Greszler, senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, said the complexity of collective bargaining agreements means that both workers forming a union and the employer need ample time to consider their implications for the future of the company and its workforce.
“When you have a first contract, especially if you have a company that has never been involved in negotiations or a union, that it’s the first time that they’re representing workers, they need to understand all the issues,” she explained.
She also said contracts like the United Auto Workers union’s agreements with automakers such as Ford can run thousands of pages when accounting for memorandums of agreement, with several hundred items covered under the bargaining agreement.
“These are too many things for both workers and for employers to be able to consider within a timeframe of 120 days,” Greszler added.
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