Do Arizona’s Senators Support The Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act?

MSNBC’s Joy Reid sarcastically refers to prima donna senator Joe Manchin as “Prime Minister Manchin” and “the prince of Appalachia.”

Maybe all the negative attention this prima donna senator has been getting is paying off. The Hill reports, Manchin throws support behind union-backed PRO Act:

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) on Monday threw his support behind the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, union-backed legislation to promote labor organizing.

The PRO Act would block “right-to-work” laws, which allow people who benefit from union representation to opt out of membership and paying dues [free riders], and impose tougher restrictions on companies seeking to prevent unionization efforts.

Note: Arizona voters approved a “right-to-work” amendment to the state constitution in 1946, Proposition 4, an initiated constitutional amendment. The amendment passed in the 1946 general election by 55 percent. Later a statutory provision was also enacted, Title 23, pursuant to Section 14(b) of the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947 aka the Taft–Hartley Act.

It passed in the House last month in a narrow, party-line vote of 225-206, with just five GOP members supporting it and one Democrat voting against.

Machin’s support is significant because he is a centrist whose vote is key in a Senate evenly divided with 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans. But his support doesn’t ensure the measure will be law given that a handful of other Democrats have yet to voice support for the measure.

Sens. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), and Mark Warner (D-Va.) have yet to co-sponsor the bill.

Fellow prima donna senator Kyrsten Sinema, like Joe Manchin, is opposed to ending the senate filibuster rule. If Manchin is now on board with the PRO Act, will Sinema follow his lead?

And what is Mark Kelly’s position? Ryan Grimm reports at The Intercept, Sen. Mark Kelly Is Emerging As An Obstacle To The PRO Act:

Sen. Mark Kelly has resisted co-sponsoring a major piece of labor law reform legislation known as the PRO Act, citing a policy of not endorsing measures that don’t also have Republican support, according to sources familiar with the reasoning provided to advocates of the bill.

Apparently not a hard and fast policy: Sen. Kelly voted for the COVID-19 Relief bill and is a cosponsor of S. 1, the For The People Act, neither one of which has any Republican support. (See below).

Winning Kelly’s support for the legislation is crucial, as it is hoped that if he comes on board he could bring his Arizona colleague, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, with him, leaving backers just three cosponsors short of the 50 that would bring the bill to the floor. Kelly has told advocates that he doesn’t want to be the only Arizona senator to cosponsor the bill, so backers of the bill are hoping to win the two in tandem.

[T]he act of co-sponsoring the legislation has taken on heightened importance in the wake of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s pledge to bring the bill to a floor vote if it obtains at least 50 co-sponsors, as The Intercept previously reported. The bill has 45 co-sponsors, including 44 Democrats and independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont. The other holdouts include Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Mark Warner of Virginia, Angus King of Maine, and Sinema of Arizona.

Though five Republicans voted for it in the House, there is no credible scenario in which a Senate Republican endorses the PRO Act, meaning that Kelly’s rationale would doom it to failure. And a review of Kelly’s legislative history suggests that he is not generally uncomfortable sponsoring bills that don’t have Republican support, and that unions still have a path to winning his support.

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“Senator Kelly is evaluating the legislation and speaking about it with stakeholders in Arizona as he focuses on building an economic recovery that benefits working Arizonans who have been hit hard by the pandemic,” said a Kelly spokesperson. “As always he puts a high value on bipartisanship and makes decisions based on what is best for Arizona.”

Kelly is up for reelection in 2022, Sinema in 2024. Arizona has some of the lowest union density in the country, at less than 6 percent.

[S]upporters are hopeful that Maine’s independent King, who caucuses with Senate Democrats, will soon co-sponsor the legislation, according to multiple sources involved in the lobbying effort.

Key Point: “Passing the PRO Act with 50 votes will also require reforming the filibuster, which means that Manchin needs to be pressured both to sponsor the legislation and to reform Senate procedure so that it can pass.” This goes for the other four holdout Democrats as well.

The Hill continues:

In addition, Manchin specified that he hopes to advance it through a bipartisan legislative process, meaning support from at least 10 GOP senators would be necessary, an unlikely outcome.

OK, I’m convinced this “bipartisan” mantra of Joe Manchin is just to “own the libs” and to piss them off. He can’t possibly be so naive as to actually believe that ten Republican senators would ever vote with Democrats on anything.

“Fifty percent of unions fail in their first year of organizing. This legislation will level the playing field,” Manchin said at a National Press Club virtual event on climate change, adding that he would be a co-sponsor of the bill.

While President Biden included the PRO Act in his $2.3 trillion infrastructure proposal, Republicans of course are not expected to include it in their smaller counterproposal.

The Democratic backup plan for advancing infrastructure legislation without GOP support, by using budget reconciliation to sidestep the filibuster, includes strict limitations on what kind of legislation can be included under the rules. The PRO Act is very unlikely to pass muster with the Senate parliamentarian.

Still, the move was a win for organized labor, which has made the bill a centerpiece of its agenda.

“If I heard him correctly, I think we just made some history here with respect to the PRO act,” United Mine Workers of America President Cecil E. Roberts Jr. said at the event following Manchin’s announcement.

“That’s part of what we’re suggesting here today as what needs to happen in Appalachia.”

So it looks like prima donna Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, like fellow prima donna senator Joe Manchin, is opposed to ending the filibuster, and Sen. Mark Kelly, who is playing his cards close to his vest, are critical to getting to 50 votes on the PRO Act and for reforming the filibuster rule to pass it.

Please tell me that our Arizona senators are not intimidated by that pseudo-intellectual political hack, Robert Robb, the former flak for the anti-union Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the “Kochtopus” Goldwater Institute, and currently the resident GQP apologist at The Arizona Republic editorial pages.

Here is a sampling of the attempted intimidation of our senators he has been writing about the PRO Act on behalf of his former employers in the pages of The Republic. Will Sinema, Kelly vote to ax parts of AZ constitution?; and Sinema and Kelly are caught in a vise over union bill.

Robert Robb is the turd in the punchbowl at The Arizona Republic. People with long memories will remember that Arizona Republic Journalists Overwhelmingly Voted to Unionize (2019):

Editorial employees at the Arizona Republic voted to unionize on Thursday.

The vote in favor of representation by the NewsGuild-CWA (Communications Workers of America) comes as the Republic’s parent company, Gannett, finalizes a merger with GateHouse Media.

About 64 employees voted for unionization while 30 voted no, according to a preliminary tally. A total of 101 employees were eligible to vote.

About 30 employees were present as a representative from the National Labor Relations Board counted votes by hand, sources said. Executive editor Greg Burton, who sent multiple department-wide emails opposing the union, was also present.

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The election follows a tense month at the Phoenix-based newspaper, where the organization’s parent company, Gannett, has mounted an aggressive anti-union campaign.

Republic employees began organizing in January, following a round of corporate layoffs that claimed the job of Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Steve Benson. The campaign intensified in August after Gannett announced the proposed merger with GateHouse.

Voting took place in the editorial board room of the Republic‘s downtown office from noon to 2 p.m. and 4:30 to 6:30 p.m.

The election caps off a tense month at the Phoenix-based newspaper.

After employees went public with their union drive, Gannett mounted an aggressive anti-union campaign that at its most dramatic moments made national headlines.

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Republic executive editor Greg Burton made headlines then after sending a department-wide email likening organizers to murderers and child molesters. Burton accused union supporters of conducting “surveillance” on their colleagues.

Union supporters claimed the alleged surveillance referred to organizers keeping track of their co-workers’ support for their efforts, which is standard in union organizing.

Days later, a Gannett human resources employee confiscated the work phone of veteran reporter Sanders, one of the Republic‘s most vocal union supporters as part of an investigation into the alleged surveillance, an accusation Sanders vehemently denied. Sanders got her phone back the next day.

Burton’s email and the confiscation of Sanders’ phone received national attention and galvanized public support for the union drive.

Gannett and The Republic are anti-union ownership and management, but the employees are unionized. A relevant fact in considering some of the crap you read in the editorial pages.

Contact your senators and tell them you support the PRO Act. America’s middle class was built after World War II when America had strong unions with lots of union employees in good paying jobs. Republicans have been trying to destroy unions and unravel America’s middle class ever since. They have always been opposed to the rights of workers.