Hollie Noveletsky of Newfields is the second-generation owner of Novel Iron Works.
I am the owner and CEO of a structural steel fabrication business, Novel Iron Works in Greenland. I am also the first woman to lead our company in a male-dominated industry. And while I have never been daunted or intimated in business, I have always been apprehensive to use my voice in the public realm for fear of targeting and intimidation.
That is until D.C. politicians and their anti-small business policies compelled me to speak out publicly and explain why the PRO Act would be so detrimental to my business and others across the state and nation.
Despite the fact that the PRO Act didn’t make it out of the Senate last year, just last week President Biden again called for the PRO Act in his State of the Union. Clearly, he is not giving up, and neither am I.
Last year they tried to pass the PRO Act, a wish list for union bosses that would have granted big labor nearly full control of America’s workplaces. It would have done away with secret union ballots, invaded personal privacy and redefined what an employee is.
The PRO Act passed the House in March of 2021, with the support of New Hampshire’s Reps. Annie Kuster and Chris Pappas. In the Senate, our Sens., Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan supported this anti-small business legislation, but thankfully it died in the Senate because not all Senate Democrats would support this far-left bill.
But big labor advocates in Congress didn’t give up. They inserted key provisions of the PRO Act into the stalled so-called Build Back Better Act, the multi-trillion-dollar social spending package that was proposed late last year. And once again, our entire federal delegation supported this bill.
But Washington is resilient and union bosses don’t take no for an answer. Now they have another bill in which to stuff major provisions of the PRO Act. This time it’s the America COMPETES Act, a measure that was written to help make American businesses more competitive on the global market. At the very last minute, U.S. House Democrats quietly inserted two job-killing provisions of the PRO Act into the COMPETES Act, and of course, both Reps. Kuster and Pappas voted for it.
The first provision mandates “card check” union elections at any company and companies’ subcontractors that receive funding from the COMPETES Act. Card check denies workers the right to a secret ballot and could expose them to intimidation and threats at the hands of union organizers.
The second provision would place major make-or-break business decisions into the hands of a federally appointed panel of arbitrators if a single round of negotiations between an employer and a union fails to yield a collective bargaining agreement. Most of these arbitrators are lawyers who’ve never run a business.
Because the House and Senate passed different versions of the COMPETES Act, they must now conference and hammer out a compromise version of the bill. My only hope is that reasonable people on both sides of the aisle stop all attempts to impose these job-killing provisions in the final bill.
The unintended consequences of many of these policy proposals effectively incentivize sending manufacturing jobs overseas to foreign countries and compound the global supply chain. We would lose work, jobs and the tax revenue we help create. The House version of the America COMPETES Act will only embolden unions to the detriment of the American worker.
Dues over duty to the American worker. This is just part of the reason for the continuing decline in union membership in the U.S.
Here in New Hampshire, small business is the backbone of our economy. And I am proud to say that due to the president and our delegation’s continued efforts to push the PRO Act, I have found my voice.