Fighting for Workers and Rebuilding Union Power

Scott has long stood up for workers, and he crafts strong laws to protect and uplift our workforce. Scott’s housing laws are built to create good union construction jobs alongside more homes. He made San Francisco the first city in the country to have fully paid parental leave, passed groundbreaking legislation to support nursing mothers, and helped expand California’s investment in child care for working families. He fought to strengthen California’s wage theft laws, and he passed laws to ensure freelancers don’t miss rent as they wait for late paychecks and workers can access disability benefits even when their work takes them outside of California. 

Scott’s lifetime score with the California Labor Federation is 97%, and he has stood with workers on some of the most intense fights around wages, health care, technology, and basic protections.

Scott knows the labor movement is under attack. Corporations are using new technology to surveil and replace workers. Union-busting tactics are getting more aggressive. Federal workers have been stripped of basic rights under the Trump administration, which also quietly shut down the program that let immigrant workers report wage theft and unsafe conditions without fear of deportation. Congressional Republicans are pushing to repeal federal prevailing wage protections and pass national "right to work," while employers exploit undocumented workers' immigration status to suppress wages for everyone. Congress hasn't passed a meaningful update to federal labor law in decades. Scott is running to change that.

More than 50 million U.S. workers say they would join a union if they could. In Congress, Scott will fight to pass the PRO Act to give every worker a real right to organize. He will go further, building new protections for the modern economy: stopping companies from using AI to spy on and harm workers, empowering the agencies meant to protect employees, and rewarding employers who let workers organize freely instead of fighting them at every turn.

In Congress, Scott will work to:

Strengthen the right to organize

• Pass the PRO Act. Make it easier for workers to organize and harder for employers to delay or derail the process, including through card check and vote-by-mail union elections.
• Ban captive audience meetings. Employers should never be able to force workers to sit through anti-union propaganda on the clock.
• Fight national "right to work" legislation. Oppose any federal scheme that lets workers benefit from a union contract without contributing to the union that negotiated it, a tactic designed to starve unions of the resources they need to represent workers.
• Restore and codify collective bargaining rights for federal employees. Reverse efforts to reclassify federal workers just to strip them of their union protections.
• Establish sectoral bargaining to empower workers across the economy. Establish federal wage boards to set higher standards for workers in key sectors and boost union density.

Raise pay and standards

• Raise the federal minimum wage to a living wage. Scott supports the Living Wage for All Act, which raises the minimum hourly wage to $25 by 2031 for large employers, and other efforts including Senator Sanders' Raise the Wage Act.
• Protect the Davis-Bacon Act. Block Republican efforts to repeal federal prevailing wage requirements, so union tradespeople building federally funded roads, transit, and housing keep getting paid fair, locally competitive wages.
• Provide unemployment insurance for striking workers. No one should have to choose between exercising their right to strike and paying their bills.
• Ban noncompete agreements nationwide. Fix the FTC's rule through legislation after courts blocked it from taking effect.

Strengthen enforcement and accountability

• Fully fund and staff the NLRB. Strengthen its power to penalize employers who violate labor law, so breaking the law is no longer just the cost of doing business.
• Rebuild wage and safety law enforcement. Fully fund and staff the Department of Labor, OSHA, and the Wage and Hour Division so wage theft and unsafe workplaces are actually investigated and punished, instead of employers betting they'll never get caught.
• Tie federal funding to labor neutrality. Require employers who receive federal subsidies and tax breaks to stay neutral when their workers seek to unionize, building on the model used in the CHIPS Act.

Raise pay and standards

• Protect workers from unchecked AI in the workplace. Ban employer use of AI to surveil workers, and require transparency and worker input before AI can be used to make hiring, firing, or discipline decisions.
• Create a federal test to stop gig worker misclassification. Companies should not be able to deny workers fair pay and basic protections by mislabeling them as independent contractors.
• Treat immigration status as the labor issue it is:
• Restore and codify Deferred Action for Labor Enforcement (DALE), the whistleblower protection the Trump administration quietly shut down, so workers who report wage theft or unsafe conditions can't be deported for speaking up.
• Crack down on employers who exploit undocumented workers' immigration status to underpay them and dodge accountability, and support a path to citizenship, because normalizing immigration status removes the leverage employers use to suppress wages and silence workers.

Scott’s Legislative Track Record

• San Francisco's Paid Parental Leave Ordinance (2016): First law in the nation requiring fully paid parental leave
• SB 988 (2024): The Freelance Worker Protection Act establishes strict baseline legal protections for independent contractors against late or non-payment.
• SB 310 (2025): Would have allowed workers who are victims of wage theft to independently sue employers for the full statutory penalties associated with late or unpaid wages.
• SB 271 (2019): Ensures that California-resident entertainment workers can claim disability and unemployment benefits even if their work takes them out of state
• SB 142 (2019): Requires employers to provide safe, private, and clean lactation spaces and standardizes exactly what a workplace lactation room must look like
• SB 1442 (2018): Prohibits pharmacies from requiring pharmacists to work alone during public hours; a qualified employee must always be available to assist.