by Tula Connell, Jan 5, 2007

Working people are struggling to get by and America’s middle class is disappearing. So why don’t more join unions to bargain for better wages and benefits?

One big reason: Many are illegally fired if they try.

A new study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) reports a steep rise in illegal firings of pro-union workers in the 2000s. Analyzing data from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that tracks such statistics, economist John Schmitt and research assistant Ben Zipperer find that nearly one-in-five union organizers or activists can expect to be fired as a result of their activities in a union election campaign.

According to the report, Dropping the Ax: Illegal Firings During Union Election Campaigns:

In the 1970s, a pro-union worker involved in a union-organizing campaign faced about a 1-in-100 chance of being fired illegally. The probability of being fired reached its historical peak in the first half of the 1980s, with about 1-in-42 pro-union workers being fired illegally. From the second half of the 1980s through the second half of the 1990s, the likelihood of a being fired declined steadily but remained high, reaching about 1-in-87 pro-union workers by the end of the period.

From 2000 on, however, the likelihood that a pro-union worker would be fired in a union-election campaign has jumped sharply—to about 1 in every 53 pro-union workers.

It’s not fair that people are fired for seeking the freedom to form unions—and the AFL-CIO union movement is working hard to change the nation’s weak labor laws so workers won’t be treated this way by employers. Together, with our allies in the faith and grassroots communities, we’re working for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act in Congress.

The act would strengthen protections for workers’ freedom to choose by authorizing stronger penalties for violation of the law when workers seek to form a union. It also would require employers to recognize a union after a majority of workers sign cards authorizing union representation and would provide for mediation and arbitration of first-contract disputes.

Just today, the NLRB released a data that shows union representation petitions dropped more than 25 percent in 2006—what AFL-CIO President John Sweeney describes as “further evidence that the current NLRB system is badly broken—so broken that working people have been forced to abandon the system in an effort to find other ways to exercise their freedom to form unions and bargain for better wages and benefits.”

After the House passes its first 100 hours of legislation, House leaders plan to take up passage of the Employee Free Choice Act—and anti-worker groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are plotting an all-out, massively funded attack against the bill.

In a “greed is good” moment yesterday, chamber President Tom Donohue used a press conference on the $210 million severance package given to Robert Nardelli after he abruptly resigned as Home Depot chairman to emphasize how the chamber will fight any bill that would level the playing field for workers seeking to join unions.

Unlike most Americans, the Chamber must think it’s OK for employers to illegally fire workers for forming unions.

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