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Another Co-Sponsor Backs Workers’ Right to Form a Union |
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Two more co-sponsors is all that’s needed for supporters to have a majority of the U.S House behind a bill that would level the playing field when workers try to form unions.
Delegate Eni Faleomavaega’s (D-American Samoa) support for the Employee Free Choice Act brings the number of co-sponsors to 216 in the U.S. House, just two short of a majority. Although Faleomavaega and another co-signer, Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), do not have votes in the House, both can sign a discharge petition to force the bill out of committee and bring it to the floor. Two hundred eighteen votes are needed for a discharge petition. The bill has 42 co-sponsors in the U.S. Senate.
In April 2005, a bipartisan coalition reintroduced the Employee Free Choice Act. The act would strengthen workers’ freedom to choose union representation by requiring employers to recognize a union after a majority of employees signs authorization cards. It also would provide for mediation and arbitration of first-contract disputes and authorize stronger penalties for violation of labor law when workers seek to form unions.
Even though some 57 million workers say they would join a union, according to research by Peter D. Hart Research Associates, employers routinely mount vicious anti-union campaigns and use the federal union elections process to coerce workers to vote against the union.
Brian Breining is one of them. Breining and two of his co-workers say they were fired for trying to win representation by the USW International Union (USW). Speaking at a Capitol Hill forum May 9 on the Employee Free Choice Act sponsored by the Americans for Democratic Action, they said management of Cultured Stone Co. in Dover, Ohio, harassed and intimidated them and their co-workers, eventually firing the three men. More than 24,000 workers are fired each year for trying to form unions, according to a report by Human Rights Watch.
In 2005, researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Center for Urban Economic Development reported that when faced with organizing drives, 30 percent of employers fire pro-union workers, 49 percent threaten to close a worksite if the union prevails and 51 percent coerce workers into opposing unions with bribery or favoritism.
Despite support from 258 members of Congress, Republican leaders aren’t likely to allow a vote on the legislation even if it does gain majority support. A more likely scenario would bring a vote on legislation backed by Big Business and anti-worker lawmakers that would ban the majority sign-up process.
The Bush administration’s National Labor Relations Board, which is charged with protecting workers’ freedom to form unions, has systematically been reducing the coverage of federal labor law, ruling recently that the law does not apply to college graduate assistants, among others.
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