Stephanie Bloomingdale
Stephanie Bloomingdale
PRO Act
Patrick Zastrow was among more than 200 Colectivo Coffee workers who voted in March 2021 on whether to have a union represent employees at the chain’s 20 coffee shops in Madison, Milwaukee and Chicago, along with those working at its production facility, bakery and warehouse.
Wisconsin labor activists consider the episode an object lesson in the need for the Protect the Right to Organize Act — the PRO Act — which would provide the strongest reinforcement of labor rights since the National Labor Relations Act was passed in the Great Depression.
“There’s a realization … that this is a big social justice and social movement issue,” said Robert Kraig, executive director of Wisconsin Citizen Action, at a news conference April 26 2021 outside the Capitol called by his organization and the Wisconsin AFL-CIO.
Making it easier for workers to form unions would raise incomes and expand benefits, said Kraig. “It would have the biggest impact on African American workers, Latinx workers, women, because they are the ones that are in the professions [that] do not get a living wage job, and they don’t get good benefits.”
One provision of the PRO Act would ban employers from requiring workers to attend so-called captive audience meetings, such as Zastrow described at Colectivo, which are common when employers campaign to block unionization.
Zastrow, who spoke at the news conference, said the anti-union consultant would claim to workers “that we would be better off representing ourselves to ask for raises, increased benefits and better working conditions — something that many of us had tried already.”
“We want to make sure that people have dignity on the job and that they have respect,” said Wisconsin AFL-CIO President Stephanie Bloomingdale. “And that when they want to form a union, they ought to be able to do that free of intimidation, free of these shady union busters coming in making millions and millions of dollars on breaking the will of workers who are simply coming together to have a voice in their workplaces.” Originally passed in the South, “so-called ‘right to work’ laws are divisive and racist in their origins and intentions,” said Bill Franks, who chairs the Labor and Industry Committee of the Dane County NAACP. “The PRO Act is more than labor law reform — it is civil rights legislation. A union contract is the single best tool we have to close to close racial and gender wage gaps and to ensure dignity and due process for workers, regardless of where they were born, of who they are, and what industry they work in.”
In Wisconsin, Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin has been a cosponsor of the PRO Act since it was introduced.
Monday’s news conference was directed at increasing awareness of the legislation. It was also held to publicize a resolution that Democrats in the state Legislature have drafted for lawmakers to declare their support for the PRO Act.
Authors of the resolution, Rep. Chris Sinicki (D-Milwaukee) and Sen. Bob Wirch (D-Somers) began circulating a draft of the resolution seeking signatures from other lawmakers. Most of the Democrats in both houses have signed on. While Republican support would appear to be unlikely, Bloomingdale, along with Sinicki and Sen. Janis Ringhand (D-Evansville), who also took part in Monday’s news conference, said they would welcome any that they might get.
“It’s time that we as Wisconsinites got back to our progressive roots,” Sinicki said. “It’s time that we remember that this state in this nation was built on the backs of labor.”[1]
Transition Team
In 2018 Tony Evers' workforce and economic development committee included Terry McGowan, president and business manager of Local 139 of the International Union of Operating Engineers, joins fellow big labor leaders Dean Warsh, IBEW Local 494, Stephanie Bloomingdale, AFL-CIO, Bruce Colburn, SEIU, Kim Kohlhaas, AFT-Wisconsin, and Peter Rickman, Milwaukee Area Service & Hospitality Workers Organization, on the committee advising Evers.