Republican lawmakers in Congress have proposed another dubiously-titled bill that would undercut collective bargaining rights for every American.
The RAISE Act (H.R. 3154), as they call it, would give employers the right to ignore previously-negotiated collective bargaining agreements in order to give arbitrary pay increases and bonuses to select employees. Passage of the bill could result in the widening of the pay gap between men and women and open the door for widespread discrimination of older and minority workers.
The bill, introduced by Rep. Todd Rokita (R-IN), would gut a key premise of the National Labor Relations Act, which protects privately-negotiated, legally-binding collective bargaining agreements. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) is the sponsor of the Senate version of the bill.
When a similar measure was introduced and failed to pass in 2012, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) called it “a solution in search of a problem.”
