by James Parks, Feb 5, 2007

If you want to know what really happens when America’s workers try to form a union and why the Employee Free Choice Act is so important, listen to the stories of workers featured in an AFL-CIO audio report.

Kathy Ancil, a member of the Utility Workers (misidentified in the audio as Operating Engineers) in Michigan, will tell you she was followed at work after she began speaking out for a union:

I was actually shadowed until I had to go down to our Human Resources Department to complain about it before it was actually stopped. They also had one-on-one meetings, tried to intimidate me and threaten me. When we attended group meetings, someone was watching from across the road. These are things that are illegal in a campaign. But when you file an unfair labor practice with the NLRB [National Labor Relations Board], it takes so much time. In the meantime, all these things were still going on.

Our nation’s labor laws need to be changed. Tomorrow, the first big step in that process will happen when the Employee Free Choice Act will be reintroduced. Some 230 House members already have signed up as co-sponsors of the bill—and the number is growing.

The Employee Free Choice Act would:

• Establish stronger penalties for violations of employee rights when workers seek to form a union and during first-contract negotiations.
• Provide mediation and arbitration for first-contract disputes.
• Allow employees to form unions by signing cards authorizing union representation.

Gracie Heldman, who works at Consolidated Biscuit (CBC) in Ohio where workers have been trying to form a union with the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers for five years, puts it this way:

We need this. This is America. We have rights that are already guaranteed. This free choice act would be wonderful. It would be a very strong law that they would pass. There would be stronger penalties for companies that would break the law. And I think America needs that. We need that free choice.

To hear more of the workers’ stories, click here.

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