House Republicans Approve Bill to Protect Illegal Job Outsourcers

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Sep 15, 2011

WASHINGTON – The House approved a special interest bill today that would make it easier for corporations to ship jobs overseas in retaliation against American workers for exercising their fundamental labor rights.

The bill, dubbed the GOP’s Outsourcers’ Bill of Rights (H.R. 2587), would remove the only meaningful legal remedy available to workers if a company illegally moves operations or eliminates work because workers engage in protected activities like forming a union or collective bargaining.

“The Republican bill sends a message to employers to retaliate against employees who may demand a piece of the American dream,” said Rep. George Miller (D-CA), the senior Democrat of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. “We should be working to create jobs, not send American jobs overseas. We should be working to strengthen the middle class, not tear it down. We should be working together to send the message that, during these most difficult economic times, Congress is on the side of the middle class.”

While an employer is free to move operations as they see fit, they cannot do so for an unlawful reason. Retaliating against workers for exercising their rights under the National Labor Relations Act is one such unlawful reason.

Under the Republican bill, if a company closes an entire U.S. plant or part of a U.S. plant and moved the work to China because the U.S. employees organized a union, the National Labor Relations Board would no longer have the power to order the work to be kept in or returned to the U.S.

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