Posts tagged franchising
Comer introduces bill to help small business owners
July 19, 2025 // Kentucky First District Congressman James Comer, R-Tompkinsville, has introduced the Save Local Business Act, which clarifies the joint employer standard to provide certainty for small business owners and workers across the country. Comer notes that in recent years, small businesses have suffered under unelected bureaucrats at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) who have dramatically expanded the definition of “joint employer” and implemented burdensome regulations for small businesses. “Congress must promote policies that empower small businesses and free them from stifling regulations pushed by an unchecked and unelected federal bureaucracy,”
Rep. Allen, Vinnie Vernuccio: How to empower workers and improve unions
June 26, 2025 // The ERA will protect workers’ rights while refocusing unions on their core mission of representing employees. It will give workers and entrepreneurs the confidence to champion their future and shape our economy for decades. The ERA protects and promotes the foundational elements of the modern economy. It ensures that workers of all backgrounds can continue pursuing their American dream by guaranteeing their right to decide how and when they work as independent contractors. That fundamental right has long been under attack and in danger due to conflicting federal laws, regulations, and rulings. The ERA also ensures that Americans can continue to pursue entrepreneurship through franchising by permanently clarifying the shifting and incompatible “joint employer” standards that have threatened this long-standing small business model.
COMMENTARY: You Can’t Support Trump and Government Unions
November 21, 2024 // Trump and his allies have talked endlessly about the need to take on the “deep state” or “drain the swamp” in Washington, D.C. Sometimes such talk veers into conspiracy-theorizing, but it’s certainly true that many federal bureaucrats are opposed to Trump and their obstruction can prevent him from governing as he was elected to govern. For years, conservatives have been raising the alarm about the constitutional problems that an entrenched, unelected administrative state presents when it hinders the elected leaders from making decisions. Government unions stand in the way of making many reforms to the civil service that Trump would like to see.
COMMENTARY: Don’t Let the Teamsters Pick the Labor Secretary
November 20, 2024 // It’s not as though congressional Republicans don’t have an alternative. The Employee Rights Act would protect secret-ballot elections, independent contracting, and franchising and prohibit union intimidation and the collection of personal information, while continuing to allow states to enact right-to-work laws. It has 84 Republican co-sponsors, and the latest two were added within the last week. Yet rather than support that bill that would build on conservative labor-policy successes, Chavez-DeRemer was one of only three Republicans who supported the PRO Act instead.
Republicans Should Beware the Big Labor Snake
July 31, 2024 // If presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris wins in November, organized labor will tighten its grip on American workers. In 2020, Ms. Harris ran on banning right-to-work provisions, codifying “card check” union election theft and sectoral bargaining. If Ms. Harris imposes her radical agenda, organized labor will likely expand its tentacles into new frontiers, such as pharmacists and ride-hailing companies. Republicans should understand that the best way to win over union workers is by doubling down on Mr. Trump’s worker freedom agenda. Tax cuts and deregulation spur economic growth and job creation, a rising tide that lifts all boats. Right-to-work laws ensure that American workers are not forced to pay dues to a union boss to put food on the table. Strong protections for independent contracting allow Americans to make a living by being their own boss.
Opinion: Trump, Republicans Must Resist Dem-Funding Union Leadership’s Attempt To Con Them
July 3, 2024 // A new report from the Center for Union Facts, first reported by the Daily Caller News Foundation, shows that the Teamsters spent $9 million on politics between 2019 and 2022. Of that, a staggering 99% funded Democrat-aligned groups and anti-Trump media outlets. More than $2.6 million in Teamsters political donations went toward registered Democrats and Democratic campaign arms. The Teamsters also funded anti-Trump activist groups that plan to bury a second Trump presidency in litigation. Given that nearly all of the Teamsters political spending went to Democrats and far-left causes, it would be reasonable to assume that rank-and-file union members uniformly vote Democrat. That is not the case: In 2020, 40% of households with a union member voted for Trump.
Do we all work for the federal government?
November 6, 2023 // Under the NLRB’s reasoning, the federal government is a joint employer of all workers covered by these laws. It even says that joint employers include those who exercise “reserved control” — i.e., they don’t set standards, but they have the power to do so. That expands the definition of joint employer even more. Congress has the power to draft legislation affecting essentially any part of the economy. As such, it reserves the right to set standards for all workers, making the federal government a joint employer of anyone and everyone. It’s highly unlikely that unions or the NLRB will try to apply the new rule in this way, since it’s clearly beyond the pale. (Imagine Department of Labor officials bargaining with union officials over the future of workers at your mechanic, along with almost every other business you’ve ever patronized.) Yet if it’s wrong to say that Washington, D.C., is a joint employer over the economy’s workers, it’s equally wrong to make that claim about larger companies and the workers at their independent franchisees. It defies logic — and will injure millions of small businesses and their workers.
Op-ed: Workers need empowerment, not more Bidenomics failures
September 7, 2023 // The act would restore the flexibility workers deserve. Finally, the bill protects workers from being forced to undermine their own deeply held beliefs. Unions can spend workers’ dues to support politicians and political causes without expressed approval from each member. The Employee Rights Act requires unions to get workers’ permission before spending their hard-earned money on partisan politics. The American people overwhelmingly support every provision of the Employee Rights Act — including those in union households. They want to unleash workers, not shackle them with the demands of special interests, and they’re looking for leaders who put workers first.
Labor Day 2023: Here’s a principled way for workers ‘to make their own choices’
September 1, 2023 // The best way to help workers and families is to remove barriers to their freedom and opportunity, instead of erecting new ones. That means empowering workers to make more of their own choices instead of letting bureaucrats and union officials control what they earn, where they work, and how our economy functions. Workers don’t need more leaders who advocate the failed ideas of the past. They deserve leaders who respect their role as the protagonists in their own and their families’ lives and will deliver better jobs, bigger paychecks, and a brighter future.
Contesting the PRO Act’s Coercive Vision
April 1, 2022 // The Employee Rights Act presents a firm contrast with the vision outlined in the PRO Act and supported by Big Labor and its allies in Congress and the Biden administration. Where the PRO Act increases union financial coercion of workers to aid its political allies, the ERA reduces it. Where the PRO Act infringes on workers’ informed consent on union formation, the ERA protects it. Where the PRO Act limits worker privacy, the ERA expands it. Where the PRO Act fails to provide financial transparency and scrutiny in union operations, the ERA provides it. And where the PRO Act endorses Big Labor’s every-job-a-factory-job vision, the ERA promotes modern understandings of compensation and flexibility in working arrangements.