Mass. Governor Has Second Chance to Support Workers. Will He?

by Mike Hall, Jul 28, 2006

For the second time in a week, Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) has the opportunity to show he supports working people. He blew his first chance July 21 when he vetoed a bill that would have raised the state’s minimum wage.

Now, he has the chance to pass a worker-friendly bill that would make it easier for state and municipal employees to exercise their freedom to form unions. But opposition to the measure by the Associated Industries of Massachusetts, the state’s largest coalition of businesses, may mean workers lose out again.

Under the bill, public-sector workers’ choice to join a union would be recognized when a majority of workers in a unit, such as a state agency, sign authorization cards. Majority sign-up is a major provision of the union-backed Employee Free Choice Act, which has 216 co-sponsors in the House and 43 in the Senate.

Karl Klare, a Northeastern University School of Law professor who helped draft the bill, says the legislation focuses on the small number of Massachusetts public employees who do not already belong to unions.

Illinois, New Jersey and New York have majority sign-up laws for public employees, but 23 states have laws on the books that forbid public employees from joining unions.

Both private- and public-sector workers face often hostile and vicious anti-union campaigns from their employers during the traditional National Labor Relations Board election process. Majority sign-up helps reduce employer intimidation and harassment and strengthens workers’ rights to join a union.

The Massachusetts bill passed the state House of Representatives in April. Before the Senate approved it last week, the Massachusetts AFL-CIO encouraged the three candidates for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination to follow up on a workers’ rights pledge they signed in May and write state Senate President Robert Traviglini urging passage of the bill.

Gubernatorial candidate Chris Gabrieli wrote:

Passage of HB 429 illustrates that as one of the largest employers in the Commonwealth, public sector agencies and local governments respect the men and women working for them. In addition, passage would allow public sector entities to quickly recognize that a majority of their employees seek union representation and allow for a cost effective method to grant that right. At no time, should taxpayer dollars be used to delay or oppose public employees’ right to organize.

Click here to read more from the candidates’ letters.

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