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Democrats Propose Tax Reforms To Boost Union Membership

Senate Democrats plan to introduce a pair of bills Thursday that could encourage more union membership and make it more costly for employers to crack down on organizing efforts.

The legislation rolled out by Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) would use tax law to accomplish those goals. One bill, which has 40 cosponsors, would restore a tax break that union members enjoyed until Republicans overhauled the tax code under former President Donald Trump.

The other bill, which has 27 cosponsors, would bar employers from deducting the cost of anti-union campaigns as a business expense.

Casey, a member of the Senate committees overseeing tax and labor policy, told HuffPost that the proposals would “help level the playing field for workers and empower them to exercise their right to organize.”

Casey said in a statement: “These are commonsense steps to restore fairness to our nation’s tax code and stop rewarding corporations’ bad behavior when taking advantage of hardworking Americans and their families.”

The legislation is largely symbolic since it’s all but certain to fail in the GOP-controlled House of Representatives. And Senate Democrats omitted the legislation from the that lawmakers should bar tax deductions for anti-union campaigns because such efforts conflict with another federal law, the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which promotes collective bargaining in the private sector.

“Although companies may have the legal authority to engage in anti-union campaigns,” the authors wrote, “there is no public policy justification for having taxpayers subsidize such conduct, especially when you consider that the express purpose of the NLRA is to encourage collective bargaining.”

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March 2023
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