On March 4, the House Education and Labor Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Investment held a hearing entitled “Reauthorizing the National Apprenticeship Act: Strengthening and Growing Apprenticeships for the 21st Century.” The National Apprenticeship Act, also known as the Fitzgerald Act, has not been reauthorized since its enactment in 1937 and the Subcommittee released a discussion draft bill to reauthorize the act ahead of Wednesday’s hearing.  

On Feb. 26, ABC sent a letter calling on Congress to consider how its infrastructure investment agenda could impact merit shop contractors and the small business community during a hearing titled Moving America’s Infrastructure Forward. Convened by U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Small Business’ Contracting and Infrastructure Subcommittee, the hearing was timed to coordinate with the recent release of Democrats’ $760 billion infrastructure investm

On Jan. 16, the U.S. Senate approved President Trump’s signature trade deal with Mexico and Canada, the USMCA, in an overwhelmingly bipartisan 89-10 vote. The agreement previously passed the House in December on a similarly bipartisan 385-41 vote and now awaits the president’s signature of the deal into law.

On Oct. 9, the Honolulu City Council passed a highly contentious ordinance that will require the city to negotiate a “community workforce agreement” with the Hawaii Building and Construction Trades Council, the Hawaii Construction Alliance and their affiliated labor unions for certain public works projects. The city says the ordinance will apply to “critical city projects” in which the city has a particular interest in timely and cost-efficient project completion. The CWA will largely apply to critical road, wastewater, drainage and park improvement projects.

On Tuesday, Sept. 10, Republican special election candidates Greg Murphy and Dan Bishop won their highly anticipated respective congressional campaigns in North Carolina.

On July 25, the ABC-led Coalition for a Democratic Workplace testified before a House subcommittee on the Protecting the Right to Organize Act (H.R. 2474), which would jeopardize workers’ privacy, constitutional rights and freedoms if passed. This legislation currently has 186 Democrat cosponsors and is essentially a “union boss wish list,” as Ranking Member Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) described it in his opening statement.

On June 26, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee approved the Lower Health Care Costs Act (S. 1895) by a bipartisan vote of 20-3. This bill seeks to address several cost-driver issues within our nation’s health care system including protecting patients from surprise medical billing and increasing transparency within health care.

On May 28, as part of the Partnership for the Employer-Sponsored Coverage, ABC signed on to a letter to the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee supporting legislation to combat surprise billing in health care and providing key insight on the committee’s draft proposals.

On May 8, ABC submitted a letter to the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee regarding the hearing, “Paid Family and Medical Leave: Helping Workers and Employers Succeed.” In the letter, ABC expressed concern over proposed legislation that would mandate employers to provide 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave funded through a new payroll tax on employers and employees.

On May 9, the White House held a summit on protecting Americans from surprise medical billing, which occurs when insured patients incur unexpected charges after receiving treatment from out-of-network health care providers. On April 2, ABC joined a broad-based coalition in a letter to the U.S. House Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions to hold a hearing to examine surprise billing.