PRO Act Explained: Elections, Strikes, and Penalties

The PRO Act, formally the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, is a proposed federal bill that would rewrite the National Labor Relations Act to make union organizing easier, reclassify many independent contractors as employees, and impose real financial penalties on employers who interfere with labor activity. It is not law. The most recent version was reintroduced as H.R. 20 in March 2025, named for the late AFL-CIO president Richard L. Trumka, and referred to the House Committee on Education and Workforce; it has not advanced to a floor vote.¹ Everything below describes what the bill would do if enacted, not the current state of federal labor law.

Who Would Count as an Employee

The provision with the widest reach beyond union members is a new test for telling employees apart from independent contractors. The PRO Act would replace the current multi-factor analysis with a stricter three-part standard, often called the ABC test. A worker would be presumed to be an employee unless the hiring company proved all three of the following:

The worker is free from the company’s control and direction over how the work is performed, both in practice and under any contract.
The work falls outside the company’s usual line of business.
The worker is customarily engaged in an independently established trade or business of the same type as the work being performed.

The burden sits entirely with the company. Fail one prong and the worker defaults to employee status under the NLRA.² California codified the same basic framework statewide in 2019.³

The second prong is the sharp edge for gig platforms and staffing firms. A rideshare company would struggle to argue that transporting passengers falls outside its usual business. Same problem for a delivery app calling its couriers contractors, or a janitorial firm doing the same with its cleaners. Under current law, these companies can lean on a control-based analysis and point to flexible scheduling as evidence of contractor status. The ABC test largely closes that argument.

One boundary worth flagging: this test would apply to the NLRA, meaning union and collective-bargaining rights. It doesn’t automatically rewrite classification under the tax code or other federal statutes, though workers reclassified as employees would gain the associated bargaining rights, unemployment insurance access, and workers’ compensation coverage that go with employee status.

How Union Elections Would Change

Several provisions compress the timeline between an organizing drive and actual bargaining, and cut back the employer’s ability to slow the process.

Card Check and Bargaining Orders

Today, even when a majority of workers sign authorization cards, the employer can insist on a formal NLRB secret-ballot election. Under the PRO Act, an employer presented with majority card support would have to either recognize the union voluntarily or promptly file a petition for an election. If it did neither, or if it filed for an election and then committed unfair labor practices serious enough to taint the results, the NLRB could issue a bargaining order requiring the company to negotiate without any vote at all.² The NLRB revived a similar framework administratively in its 2023 Cemex decision, holding that even a single unfair labor practice could invalidate an election and trigger a bargaining order.

Employers Out of Election Procedures

The bill would remove employers as parties in representation proceedings before the NLRB. Companies currently participate in hearings to challenge the scope of the bargaining unit, contest which workers can vote, and raise procedural objections that push election dates back. Strip that standing and the unit definition is left to the workers and the Board. The bill would also authorize mail-ballot elections so workers can vote from home rather than at a polling location on the employer’s premises.

First Contract Timelines

Winning an election is only half the fight. Many newly formed unions never reach a first contract because employers can drag out bargaining indefinitely. The PRO Act sets deadlines. Once a union is certified, the employer would have to begin bargaining within 10 days of a written request. If no agreement is reached within 90 days, either side could request mediation through the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service. If mediation fails, the dispute goes to a binding arbitration panel that would set the terms of the initial contract, weighing factors including the employer’s financial condition and the local cost of living.² The backstop is designed to stop the tactic of slow-walking negotiations until worker enthusiasm collapses.

Employer Tactics That Would Be Banned

Captive Audience Meetings

Employers currently hold mandatory meetings during work hours where management presents arguments against unionizing. Workers must attend or face discipline. The PRO Act would make these an unfair labor practice. The NLRB moved ahead of the legislation on this point, ruling in 2024 that captive-audience meetings violate workers’ rights under existing law.⁴ Writing the prohibition into statute would make it harder for a future Board to reverse.

Permanent Replacement of Strikers

Since the Supreme Court’s 1938 Mackay Radio decision, employers have had the right to hire permanent replacements for workers striking over economic issues like wages or benefits.⁵ Permanent replacement effectively ends the striker’s job even though the strike itself was legal. The PRO Act would prohibit permanent replacements entirely. Temporary replacements to keep operations running during a strike would still be allowed.

Lockouts and Intermittent Strikes

The bill would ban offensive lockouts, where an employer preemptively shuts workers out to gain leverage before or during negotiations. Defensive lockouts in response to an actual or imminent strike would still be permitted. On the union side, the PRO Act would legalize intermittent strikes, short repeated work stoppages rather than a single continuous strike. That tactic is currently unprotected, meaning workers who use it can be disciplined or fired.

New Leverage for Unions

Secondary Boycotts

Federal law currently prohibits unions from pressuring neutral businesses that deal with the employer the union is actually fighting. A union with a dispute against a manufacturer cannot picket a retailer that sells the manufacturer’s products. That restriction, in Section 8(b)(4) of the NLRA, has been in place since 1947.⁶ The PRO Act would remove those secondary-boycott prohibitions, letting unions extend pickets and economic pressure to suppliers, vendors, and customers of the primary employer.⁷

Override of State Right-to-Work Laws

Roughly half of all states have right-to-work laws barring unions and employers from requiring workers to pay fees as a condition of employment. In those states, workers covered by a union contract can receive the benefits of collective bargaining without contributing to the cost of negotiating and enforcing it. The PRO Act would override those state laws by authorizing “fair share” agreements in every state. All workers in a bargaining unit would pay fees covering representation costs, whether or not they joined the union.⁸ Fees would cover collective bargaining and contract administration only, not political activity.

Broader Joint Employer Standard

The bill would widen the definition of “joint employer” under the NLRA. Any company sharing control over a worker’s terms of employment, even indirectly or through reserved contractual authority, could be treated as a joint employer alongside the direct hiring company.⁹ The change matters most in franchise relationships, staffing arrangements, and subcontracting chains. A fast-food franchisor that dictates scheduling software, pay scales, and workplace procedures could no longer claim the franchisee is the sole employer, and both companies would have to come to the bargaining table.

Penalties With Actual Teeth

The current NLRA has weak enforcement tools. The NLRB cannot impose fines for unfair labor practices, and the typical remedy for illegally firing a union supporter is back pay minus what the worker earned elsewhere in the meantime. Many employers treat those penalties as a cost of doing business.

The PRO Act would authorize the NLRB to impose civil penalties of up to $50,000 per violation. For violations that result in a worker being fired or suffering serious economic harm, the fine doubles to $100,000 if the employer committed a similar violation within the previous five years.²

The bill would also create a private right of action, letting individual workers sue in federal court when their NLRA rights are violated. If the NLRB’s General Counsel declined to prosecute, the worker could bring the claim directly. Available remedies would include full back pay, front pay, consequential damages, and additional damages equal to double the amount owed.

Corporate officers and directors who personally direct or commit unfair labor practices could be held individually liable for the penalties. That is a departure from current practice, where fines and remedies run against the company as an entity.²

Where the Bill Stands Now

The PRO Act has been introduced in every Congress since 2019. The House passed it in 2020 and again in 2021, and both times it failed to clear the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster threshold. The current version, H.R. 20, was introduced in the 119th Congress in March 2025 and sits in the House Committee on Education and Workforce.¹

Several provisions have been adopted piecemeal through NLRB rulemaking and decisions, including the Cemex framework for bargaining orders and the ban on captive-audience meetings. Those administrative actions can be reversed by a future Board without any change in statute, which is a large part of why supporters keep pressing for the underlying legislation.

1
Congress.gov. H.R.20 – Richard L. Trumka Protecting the Right to Organize Act of 2025
2
Congress.gov. H.R.842 – Protecting the Right to Organize Act of 2021 – Text
3
California Legislative Information. California Code Labor Code 2750.3 – The Contract of Employment
4
National Labor Relations Board. Board Rules Captive-Audience Meetings Unlawful
5
Legal Information Institute. National Labor Relations Board v Mackay Radio and Telegraph Co
6
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 158 – Unfair Labor Practices
7
National Labor Relations Board. Secondary Boycotts Section 8(b)(4)
8
U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. Protecting the Right to Organize Act – Fact Sheet
9
Congress.gov. Joint Employment and the National Labor Relations Act