Organized labor in the United States is currently pushing Congress to pass the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act. Unions are adamant that Joe Biden’s presidency and the Democratic Party’s slim majority in Congress present a rare opportunity to pass labor law reform now, not later.

This is a familiar dynamic in recent history. When the Democratic Party wins the White House and control of Congress, unions push for labor law reform. And every time, the push fails. The most recent example came in Barack Obama’s presidency: in the 2008 campaign, unions backed Obama, and he promised to push for the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which would have made unionizing easier for tens of millions of currently unorganized workers. Once in the White House, Obama, like so many Democrats before him, quietly dropped his promise to working-class people. EFCA never became law.

This history suggests reason for skepticism when it comes to elected officials’ promises to the PRO Act’s proponents in the labor movement. Still, those leading the push say they’ve learned from that history, and have taken it into account in shaping both their strategy for pushing the bill and the specifics of the legislation itself. (For more on that, see what Jim Williams, vice president and director of organizing for the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT), the union leading the charge to pass the PRO Act, told Jacobin in a recent interview.)