by Mike Hall, Jan 19, 2007

In Connecticutt, 911 dispatchers (above) in Waterford and school behavioral managers (below) in East Hartford voted for a voice at work with AFSCME.

Now that the U.S. House of Representatives is finished with its 100-hour kick-off flurry of action, lawmakers are turning their attention to other key working family issues in the coming weeks.

One of those will be the Employee Free Choice Act, likely to be introduced in the House in the next few weeks. In the last Congress, the Employee Free Choice Act drew the support of 216 co-sponsors in the House and 44 in the Senate.

The legislation would strengthen protections for workers’ freedom to join together in unions and bargain for wages and benefits by requiring employers to recognize a union after a majority of workers sign cards authorizing union representation. It also would provide for mediation and arbitration of first-contract disputes and authorize stronger penalties for violation of the law when workers seek to form a union.

Click here to read the latest Out Front from AFL-CIO President John Sweeney on the Employee Free Choice Act and here to read how 40,000 Michigan child care workers used majority sign up to win a voice at work with ASCME and the UAW in December.

But while workers and their unions fight to win the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, workers across the country continue to fight attacks on their freedom to form unions by employers given free rein by the anti-worker rulings of the Republican-dominated National Labor Relations Board.

Here are some of their recent victories.

In Pueblo, Colo., and Broken Arrow, Okla., more than 600 workers won a voice with the Communications Workers of America (CWA). The Colorado workers are employed at a new Cingular Wireless call center. The 350 new CWA Local 7702 members won a voice on the job through the majority sign-up process that the union and Cingular negotiated in 2005 after its merger with AT&T. Under majority sign-up, employers agree to recognize a union after a majority of workers sign cards authorizing union representation. Since the agreement, more than 17,000 former AT&T workers have won a voice with CWA.

Some 266 city workers in Broken Arrow won a voice at work with CWA Local 6012. CWA, AFSCME and other unions worked hard to win legislation in 2004 that gives municipal workers collective bargaining rights. It led to a two-year court battle that was resolved last year, and following the court victory, workers in several Oklahoma municipalities have joined together unions.

At TXU, the largest power company in Texas, more than 400 workers from linemen to clerks won a voice a work with the Electrical Workers (IBEW) in a recent election. The workers started their drive for a union in June when the utility announced it planned to subcontract hundreds of jobs.

Not only did they win their election and beat back the utility’s hired anti-union guns, but working with the union and others convinced the Texas Public Utility Commission to block the job outsourcing. Click here to read more.

Eighty-two workers at the Crown Cork and Seal plant in Owatonna, Minn., voted to join the Machinists (IAM) as did 42 workers at Wexxar Packaging in Delta, B.C., Canada.

In Connecticut, the 911 dispatchers at the Waterford Emergency Communications Center voted for a voice at work with AFSCME Council 4. The eight emergency dispatchers join 23 behavioral managers at East Hartford’s Woodland School who voted to join the union as the newest Council 4 members.

In other organizing news, the Guam Federation of Teachers (an AFT affiliate), reports the island’s 130 firefighters voted to join the union. Meanwhile in Minneapolis, the Postal Workers (APWU) National Organizing Conference continues meeting this weekend.

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