White House Task Force Releases Union Report

Last week, the White House Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment released a report outlining nearly seventy recommendations for President Biden. The task force was created under Executive Order 14025 and instructed to “identify statutory, regulatory, or other changes that may be necessary to make policies, practices, and programs more effective means of supporting worker organizing and collective bargaining.”

The report includes the following recommendations:

“Instruct the Department of Labor to review its rules and policies on persuader reporting and take all appropriate actions to strengthen its rules and enforcement to ensure maximum compliance and reporting of persuader activity.” This includes a recommendation, currently underway, to identify federal contractors that are engaging in persuader activity.

Direct the U.S. Department of the Treasury to “review and evaluate options for legislative tax proposals that could incentivize union participation and formation and other worker empowerment initiatives.”

Instruct the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) to continue to scrutinize independent contractor arrangements through enforcement (including through partnerships with agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service) and through the issuance of guidance and regulations.

Instruct the DOL to improve enforcement of the Service Contract Act to “give unionized contractors a greater ability to compete for federal service contracts because their non-union competitors will not be able to slash wages and benefits to win bidding contests.”

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