The AFL-CIO, one of the main pushers of the poisonous PRO Act, has been accused by one of its staff unions of bargaining in bad faith.

It’s not the first time.

On Wednesday, one of the unions representing staff at the AFL-CIO—the federation of more than 50 unions that is the primary pusher of the Protecting the Right to Organize Act (or PRO Act)—filed an “unfair labor practice” charge with the National Labor Relations Board.

In the charge, the Washington-Baltimore News Guild, Local 32035, is accusing the labor federation of refusing to bargain, bad-faith bargaining, including “surface bargaining” and “direct dealing” with employees.

If the NLRB finds the charges to have merit, ironically, the labor federation will have been found to be committing one of the main offenses that it accuses employers of doing in its promotion of the PRO Act.

If the PRO Act were already law, and the AFL-CIO were to be guilty of violating the law, the union federation (as an employer) and its officers–including its president Richard Trumka–could be subject to monetary penalties.

“…the PRO Act provides that directors and officers may be subject to personal liability for these civil penalties in cases where the director or officer directed or committed the violation, established a policy leading to the violation, or had actual or constructive knowledge of the violation and failed to prevent it.”

View the NLRB charge against the AFL-CIO here.

This is not the first time a union has accused the union federation of violating the law.

In 2019, during a lengthy labor dispute with a different staff union – the OPEIU – at the AFL-CIO’s headquarters filed charges against the AFL-CIO, accusing the labor federation of violating the law when it implemented a contract on that staff union.

The OPEIU-AFL-CIO even prompted AFL-CIO staff to protest outside the AFL-CIO’s headquarters in downtown Washington, DC.