Labor Law Reform

Increase NLRB funding and staffing so complaints against employers are handled in a timely fashion and employers receive strong and speedy penalties for breaking labor laws.

Enact the proposed federal Employee Free Choice Act, providing for:

  • Majority card-check recognition of unions.

  • Triple back pay for workers fired for union organizing.

  • Mandatory contract arbitration at union request after 90 days bargaining for first contract for newly recognized bargaining unit.

Repeal Repressive Labor Laws: Repeal the Taft-Hartley Act, the Hatch Act, and state “Right-To-Work” Laws which have crippled labor's ability to organize by outlawing or severely restricting labor's basic organizing tools: strikes, boycotts, pickets, and political action.

A Workers' Bill of Rights: Enact a set of legally enforceable civil rights, independent of collective bargaining, which

  1. extend the Bill of Rights protections of free speech, association, and assembly into all workplaces,

  2. establish workers' rights to living wages, portable pensions, information about chemicals used, report labor and environmental violations, refuse unsafe work, and participate in enterprise governance, and

  3. establish workers' rights to freedom from discharge at will, employer search and seizure in the workplace, sexual harassment, and unequal pay for work of comparable worth.

Expand Workers' Rights to Organize and Enjoy Free Time:

  • Ban striker replacements.

  • Triple back pay for illegally locked-out workers.

  • Unemployment compensation for striking or locked out workers.

  • Binding contract arbitration at union request.

  • Full rights for farm workers, public employees, and “workfare” workers under the Fair Labor Standards Act.

  • Ban prison slave labor: End the use of US prisoners to produce goods and services for sale to the public.

  • Double-time pay for all overtime.

  • Prohibit mandatory overtime.

  • 6 weeks paid vacation annually in addition to federal holidays.

  • 1 year paid educational leave for every 7 years worked.

  • 1 year parental leave for each child born with no loss of seniority.

  • Right to work shorter hours: No discrimination in pay and promotion against workers who choose to work short hours; no two-tier wage systems between part-timers and full-timers.

Howie Hawkins
Green Party Candidate for US Senate from New York
www.HawkinsForSenate.net