I Was Fired for Trying to Unionize My Bank, Shows Why US Needs PRO Act

• I’m a frontline bank worker who was fired for standing up for better wages, benefits and working conditions.
• The US banking industry has the lowest level of union membership, resulting in discrimination, low-wages, extreme sales goals, and few protections on the job.
• The PRO Act would protect bank workers’ ability to stand up for ourselves and our customers, and ensure the banking industry remains accountable to the people it employs and serves.
• Jasmine Snyder is a member of Committee for Better Banks and former Collateral and Insurance Administrator at Pentagon Federal Credit Union.
• This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author.
• See more stories on Insider’s business page.

Just weeks before COVID-19 reached my city of Eugene, Oregon, I was fired from my job without any prior disciplinary record or even a warning from my manager. 

Back then, we didn’t know as much as we do now about the pandemic, but I had read and seen enough to know that we needed to be prepared. So I put up a flyer in the break room to see if my coworkers at Pentagon Federal Credit Union would be interested in organizing for better healthcare. At the time, for a healthcare plan with a reasonable deductible, PenFed employees could expect to pay a premium over $400 a month to cover their family. This led many to opt for the high deductible plan, a risky gamble even without a pandemic.

PenFed’s reaction to my organizing is all too common. Employers often use firings or unfair discipline as a tactic to show their workforce that they will target anyone who speaks up for better conditions. It is an attempt by an employer to make an example of a few employees and send a message to their colleagues: speak up, and you’ll lose your livelihood, too.

Workers’ rights 

For around two years, my colleagues and I had been advocating together for better benefits — like healthcare and childcare — and reasonable sales goals. We weren’t asking for the moon, we were asking for basic respect and fair treatment as we supported the military members and veterans who bank with PenFed. We felt that unless we did this organizing, there would be no reason for PenFed CEO James Schenck to improve working conditions and make real changes to how he ran his business. 

The past year has shown the essential role of frontline workers. But honoring these workers goes beyond just acknowledging them as heroes. It means supporting our basic right to have a voice on the job and being protected against retaliation from bosses like PenFed’s CEO. 

If there’s one thing the pandemic has shown us, it’s that no matter what industry you work in — whether it’s banking or fast food or healthcare — workers have very few ways to improve their economic security. Part of why we remain stuck is because we are stopped at every turn from having a voice on the job. It’s also why we’ve been hammered with job losses and preventable cases of COVID-19.

That’s why I support the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, a crucial bill that would overhaul labor law to strengthen workers’ rights on the job, and make it easier for workers to join unions and collectively bargain with their employers. It would ban coercive activities that companies use to deter workers from joining unions, and companies who retaliate against their employees would face financial penalties for their actions.

When I was fired, I filed an Unfair Labor Practice, or ULP, against PenFed. An employer commits a ULP for violating the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, which guarantees the right of employees…