Retailers have ‘serious concerns over the destructive impacts of this legislation’

SMALL BUSINESS

The U.S. Senate is considering legislation called the PRO Act, which seeks to severely disrupt the relationship between a small business and its employees. For individual workers, the result would be an elimination of individual workers’ privacy and remove the ability for people who wish to work on a contract basis to do so (i.e., Uber, Lyft, Instacart, GrubHub and DoorDash drivers). For small businesses, it would infringe on employers’ due process rights, interfere with small businesses’ ability to secure legal advice on complex matters, and make unrelated business the victim of unwarranted attacks.

On behalf of the New Hampshire Retail Association, 95% of whose members are small New Hampshire-based retailers, we have serious concerns over the destructive impacts of this legislation.

For example, the New Hampshire leg islature spent several years fine-tuning its employee test, but the PRO Act’s “independent contractor” provision seeks to adopt a disastrous California-like test, putting an end to independent work and the gig economy, particularly those who provide last-mile delivery and other important services to retailers.

Citizens of New Hampshire value our privacy, and legislators in both parties and of all political stripes have enacted statutes that protect privacy. But the PRO Act would strip workers of many privacy rights they currently have, including the right to cast a secret ballot in union elections, replacing it with a scheme where employees are forced to publicly cast their votes and subject them to union coercion and intimidation.

Moreover, employers would be required to turn over their employees’ sensitive information, including cell phone numbers, emails and home addresses, to union organizers in advance of a union election without the opportunity for employees to provide consent or to opt out. Workers and their families could be subject to union harassment and intimidation tactics.

The PRO Act would permit unions to strike or boycott neutral third parties that are not directly involved in an underlying labor dispute. This means a small business that simply does business with a company tied up in a labor dispute with a union would be vulnerable to picketing and boycotting by union organizers.

These “secondary boycotts” are easily misinterpreted and are likely to result in economic damage to neutral small businesses and have the potential to do irreparable harm to their reputations in their local communities.

The PRO Act would impose an unacceptable amount of government control over private contracts by eliminating the freedom of employers and employees to negotiate the terms of a contract, if a bargaining agreement is not reached within the first 120 days of negotiation.

Instead, the terms would be determined by a bureaucrat from Washington, rather than New Hampshire employees working directly with the New Hampshire business owner.

The PRO Act includes other policies hurtful to small businesses, including liability for workplaces they do not control and workers they do not employ; interfering with attorney-client confidentiality, making it harder for small businesses to secure legal advice on complex labor law matters; and shortening the time between a union filing a petition for election, severely limiting the employer’s ability to communicate with employees and encouraging “backdoor” organizing.

We encourage all businesses in New Hampshire to contact U.S. Sens. Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen with thoughts on the “PRO Act,” HR 842 & S. 420.

Nancy Kyle is president of the New Hampshire Retail Association.