Republicans such as Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Rep. Jim Banks (Ind.), the chairman of the Republican Study Committee, have been working on ways to make the GOP policy agenda align better with its increasingly working-class voters. Thursday they jointly introduced a bill that is a solid step in that direction.

The proposal — called the Teamwork for Employees and Managers Act, or Team Act — aims to address one of the major problems with the modern U.S. economy: the lack of employee voice within a business.

The typical solution to this problem has been unions, but employees have increasingly rejected the union model. Only about 6 percent of U.S. private-sector workers belonged to unions in 2021, down from roughly 33 percent in 1964. Union leaders often argue this is because of unfair employer practices, but the fact is that many American workers see as many pitfalls to joining a union as they do advantages. [Posters note: go fuck yourself Henry Olsen]

The bill from Rubio and Banks would step into that gap by giving workers a nonunion way to influence corporate practices. It would authorize employers to establish employer-employee working groups outside the purview of the National Labor Relations Board that could discuss a wide range of business subjects, including compensation and working conditions. Such groups would not have the power to collectively bargain on behalf of workers, but they would give workers an opportunity to express their opinions directly and formally to management. That’s a great deal more influence than many have now as individuals with no collective voice.

Groups formed in larger businesses gain an additional advantage for their workers: a seat on the corporation’s board of directors. Although that worker-director would be nonvoting, the company would have to share with them all information provided to voting directors. Knowledge is power, and access to it would likely improve workers’ leverage within the corporate structure.

Unions and their Democratic allies will likely oppose this bill. Indeed, they opposed a similar bill with the same name in the mid-90s. What they don’t understand is that many modern employees like many aspects of the modern workplace, especially the freedom for individual advancement that a well-run workplace can offer. Old-line unions often replace that with lock-step provisions that stifle individual initiative and make worker advancement as much a matter of union prerogative as of personal merit. That was a price workers were more willing to pay in the past, when employers were more confrontational and the memory of the Great Depression was still fresh. That’s no longer the case today, and the inability of unions to prosper while wages for lower-skilled workers stagnate makes unionization an even harder sell for most workers.

Passing the Team Act would not be a gift to employers. If passed, corporations may find that workers will press them to form these nonunion alternatives, known as employee involvement organizations (EIO). That would place them in a bind. Accepting the request means giving workers a collective voice and, if the firm is large enough, a spot on the board of directors. Rejecting the request could spur employees to start organizing a union.

Nor would such a group be easy to control once formed. People like to have a voice and power, and once a company forms an EIO, failing to use it seriously could cause disappointed workers to leave the company or turn to unions as their only alternative.

The Team Act could be the spur to push big business to return to the enlightened model of employer-employee relations that many adopted in the 1950s to avoid unionization. Companies such as Hewlett-Packard, where my father worked for a quarter-century, sought to make employees happy rather than squeeze every last drop out of them in pursuit of higher profits. The “HP Way,” as that firm’s model came to be known, eschewed layoffs to fatten the bottom line, provided profit-sharing and employee stock-purchase plans, and offered corporate-sponsored employee recreation. Pressure from Wall Street and venture capital firms has largely eroded those norms in recent decades. Pressure from within, nudged by the Team Act, could begin to bring them back.

The Republican Party was once the party of the worker and the boss. It can be again if it understands that the two prosper together. Rubio and Banks get that, and their Team Act is a good starting point on the GOP’s road to a new majority.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/02/04/rubio-bill-would-give-workers-alternative-to-unions/