A New GOP Bill Would Give Workers an Alternative to Unions. Republicans Should Get Behind It.


Published February 4, 2022

The Washington Post

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.

Click here to read the rest of this piece at the Washington Post‘s website.

Henry Olsen is a Washington Post columnist and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.


Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, studies and provides commentary on American politics. His work focuses on how America’s political order is being upended by populist challenges, from the left and the right. He also studies populism’s impact in other democracies in the developed world.

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