PRO Act stalled in Senate despite passing House in 2021
The legislation that would modernize federal labor law began more than a decade ago with a handful of lawyers meeting in an ice-cream shop in Washington DC. “We wrote for hours what we would do to amend the National Labor Relations Act,” said Marni von Wilpert, who was then an attorney for the National Labor Relations Board, describing the session as bringing together “our collective experience as labor lawyers over the years, really trying to unrig the rules so that working people could have a fair shot.”
The reform plan that came out of that meeting still has not passed Congress.
Von Wilpert, a San Diego city council member, worked on the legislation with Bobby Scott, a Democratic congressman, and Patty Murray, a senator. The bill would update labor laws, including the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, and strengthen protections for organizing workers. It would allow the NLRB to assess monetary penalties for labor violations and impose liability on corporate executives. The PRO Act has been introduced in Congress annually since 2019 and passed the House in 2021, but it has long been stalled in the Senate.
“One of my biggest priorities for running for Congress myself is to finish this work, to come back as a member of Congress and finally get labor law reform across the finish line,” von Wilpert said.
Von Wilpert began her legal career as a legal fellow at the Mississippi Center for Justice and as a federal law clerk before joining the NLRB as an attorney in 2014, serving until 2017. She said she saw during that time how the rules were stacked against workers fighting labor violations, who often faced long delays and backlogs.
“A worker would either be fired for organizing or an election would be overturned, and it would take three to four years to get to me in Washington DC,” she said. “I saw how hard it was for working people to try and navigate our current labor law system.”
Von Wilpert launched her bid in the fall to replace Darrell Issa, a longtime Republican representative who represents a district in San Diego, and won a contested primary against a fellow Democrat. The newly redrawn district now slightly leans in favor of Democrats, though polls show a clean split between Desmond and von Wilpert. When von Wilpert first ran for the San Diego city council, she flipped one of the most conservative districts in the city.
The race is among several in which Democrats are seeking to retake the House majority, emphasizing affordability and workers’ rights. Von Wilpert faces Jim Desmond, a Trump-endorsed San Diego County supervisor, in the November general election.
Von Wilpert, who canvassed in a San Marcos neighborhood in late May, has emphasized her labor background to appeal to voters. She said Desmond is aligned with the Trump administration, which she said has set back workers’ rights by, among other things, decreasing workplace safety standards and firing hundreds of thousands of federal workers, including at the NLRB. As a county supervisor, Desmond has opposed pro-labor policies, including minimum wage increases for contracted county workers, a contract for county janitorial workers who made several allegations of abuse on the job, and the creation of a county office for labor standards, von Wilpert said.
“There is a big difference in this race about which candidate is going to stand up for workers and who is not,” von Wilpert said. “I am running to actually stand up for workers, level the playing field again and really unrig the economy for working people, not just the wealthy few,” she said. “This is what government, to me, should be about.”
Desmond’s campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment.