New legislation would bar companies from deducting costs associated with busting organized labor and weighing in on the elections of union leaders.
Introduced by Senate Finance Committee member Robert P. Casey Jr., D-Pa., the No Tax Breaks for Union Busting Act would classify anti-union campaigns as nondeductible political speech under the tax code. The measure, also introduced by committee Chair Ron Wyden, D-Ore., along with Sens. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., Cory A. Booker, D-N.J., and Patty Murray, D-Wash., would institute an IRS reporting requirement for employers that “intervene in protected labor activities.”
According to the Economic Policy Institute, companies have paid consultants around $340 million annually to help sway workers’ opinions about labor organization activities.
Corporations also engage in a wide range of lawful and unlawful activities to fight unions, such as threatening or coercing employees, refusing to bargain in good faith, and holding captive audience meetings featuring anti-union rhetoric, the bill text says.
“This is about power,” said Roxanne D. Brown of United Steelworkers at a May 12 press conference introducing the legislation. Most Americans aren’t aware that they are subsidizing companies’ efforts to suppress the rights of workers, she added.
Casey pointed out that the tax code already favors big corporations and the wealthiest Americans.
“But when you compound that insult by rewarding with the tax code these activities, it’s especially egregious, outrageous, and unacceptable,” Casey said.
Carrot or the Stick?
The bill introduction comes as President Biden has doubled down on his pro-union messaging, making a speech in Chicago May 11 at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers convention and even backing an effort by Capitol Hill staffers to unionize.
Unions are about providing dignity and respect for workers who “bust their neck,” Biden said at a North America’s Building Trades Unions conference in April.
Biden added that the White House Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment was keeping an eye on Amazon, which according to filings with the Department of Labor, spent more than $4 million on consulting services to fight union organizing campaigns in 2021.
Revenue-raising legislation may also be a more palatable means for Democrats to advance their agenda ahead of the midterms, as record-setting inflation has sparked calls from Republicans and centrists, such as Sen. Joe Manchin III, D-W.Va., to get the deficit under control.
Citing the clean energy, prescription drug, and child care provisions that were negotiated in the Build Back Better Act (H.R. 5376), Wyden said at the press conference that senators are looking carefully at where to direct scarce resources using the tax code.
“Every one of the dollars that goes out as a result of tax breaks for trampling on workers is money that you don’t have, for example, to put into those huge needs that are being talked about now,” Wyden said.