Employee Free Choice Act Introduced

by James Parks, Feb 6, 2007

For the first time in nearly 50 years, working families have a real opportunity to make major changes in the nation’s labor laws that will give workers greater freedom to make their own decisions about joining a union.

Last night, a bipartisan coalition in the new Congress introduced the Employee Free Choice Act, maybe the most important labor law reform in nearly 50 years.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney says the bill brings “fresh hope to millions of America’s workers who desperately want and need the free choice to join or form a union to improve their families’ lives.”

The best opportunity for working women and men to get ahead economically is by coming together with their co-workers to bargain with their employer for a better life  through a union. In fact, government statistics show that working men and women who have a union today make 30 percent more than workers who do not have a union, and they are far more likely to have health insurance and retirement plans. The bill (H.R. 800) was introduced in the House of Representatives by Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) along with 229 co-sponsors. Click here to see if your representative is a co-sponsor. If passed, the Employee Free Choice Act would make the process of choosing a union more fair by:

• Establishing stronger penalties for violation of employee rights when workers seek to form a union and during first-contract negotiations.
• Providing mediation and arbitration for first-contract disputes.
• Allowing employees to form unions by signing cards authorizing union representation.

Currently, if employees present an employer with union authorization cards signed by a majority, the employer can demand a secret ballot election supervised by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). But the NLRB election process is broken because it enables employers to intimidate, coerce and harass workers and drag out the process indefinitely.

Just ask Bill Lawhorn, who joined with his co-workers five years ago to try to form a union at Consolidated Biscuit Co. (CBC) in McComb, Ohio. Lawhorn was fired after he spoke in favor of the union. Even though 650 of 875 employees—an overwhelming majority— signed cards saying they wanted a union, CBC responded with threats, harassment and intimidation, forcing workers to attend meetings where they slammed the union and workers were not allowed to say anything. After the union election in 2002, Lawhorn was fired. 

Since then, the labor board has held that I was illegally fired because of my involvement with the union. And the board ordered CBC to give me my job back with back pay.  It’s 2007, and I still have nothing.

I haven’t had a steady job in more than four years. We get by because my children have lent us money. At my age, that’s not right. I should be loaning my children money, not the other way around.

The laws are set up for the employer to win.  Even when he loses, he wins. CBC has been ordered to do a lot of things by the board, but it just doesn’t do them.

I don’t have my job back yet. There hasn’t been a second union election.  Nothing has been done. Is that right?

And Lawhorn’s experience is not unique.

Mahelio Rico and his mostly Latino co-workers who work in residential construction in Arizona and Nevada began fighting for a decent wage and better working conditions by forming a union. The company fired Mahelio less than one month after he submitted evidence in support of a wage and hour lawsuit, claiming he took too long to travel to a new work location. When the union filed unfair labor practice charges against the company, management claimed Rico was late for work one day and stole an hour of their time.

Rico says it’s not just about  the pay:

We just want justice for all our co-workers. (See video.)

Employers are well aware that passage of the Employee Free Choice Act will take away their advantages in the union-selection process, and they plan to fight the bill just as hard as they fight to keep unions out of their work place.

As reported here and here just yesterday, the Daily Labor Report (subscription required) recounts an episode during a question-and-answer session at an executive summit of the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors (NAW) in Washington,  D.C. According to an audience member:

….the International Brotherhood of Teamsters sought to organize 30 of his company’s drivers in 2003, but obtained only 11 signed union authorization cards. Unless an employer learns of the organizing drive, “You have no chance to retaliate—I shouldn’t say retaliate,” he said to peals of nervous laughter from the audience. Rather, he corrected himself, “You have no chance to say [as an employer] what’s going on.”

Some 60 million U.S. workers say they would join a union if they could, based on research conducted by Peter D. Hart Research Associates in December 2006. But when workers try to gain a voice on the job by forming a union, employers routinely respond with intimidation, harassment and retaliation.A poll conducted in December by Hart Research showed a strong majority of the public—65 percent—approves of unions, up from 55 percent in 1981. But that same poll, taken for us at the AFL-CIO, also showed that nearly one-third of the public does not realize how hard management fights workers who seek to form unions.In fact:

• 51 percent of private-sector employees threaten to shut down partially or totally if the union wins the election.
• 25 percent of private-sector employers fire at least one worker during organizing campaigns.

And management does lots more to intimidate and harass workers seeking to form a union.

The Employee Free Choice Act will give workers the opportunity to make a difference in the workplace, says Nikkia Parish, a former dancer with the Washington (D.C.) Ballet—former because her contract wasn’t renewed after she and her co-workers began fighting for a union.

Fed up with relentless work schedules that led to an alarmingly high rate of serious injuries, the dancers demanded respect. What they got was an aggressive anti-union campaign in which management threatened and intimidated workers and finally offered a 20 percent raise if they voted against the union, Parish says.

Even that ploy failed, and the workers voted for the union. But the process was too long, she says.

As it is now, there’s so much red tape and bureaucracy before you’re allowed to do what you have a right to do. It makes you wonder if you really want to do this.

When we tried to form a union, it got so ugly. Creativity and free thought were replaced with distrust, anger and resentment. That makes for an unsafe working environment—physically, mentally and emotionally.

The bill has a good chance of passage because working people showed the value of political organizing by helping elect a new Congress in 2006.

Just days after the Nov. 7 elections, newly elected House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) promised that after the first 100 hours of business the 110th Congress would move to pass the Employee Free Choice Act.

Says Pelosi:

The right to form unions, the right to quality health care, the right to bargain collectively and the right to safe workplaces are non-negotiable. Too often, American workers face harassment, intimidation and coercion when they try to exercise the right to join a union. The Employee Free Choice Act preserves this fundamental freedom, benefiting all American workers and their families.

But the Employee Free Choice Act doesn’t just help union members. University of California-Berkeley professor Harley Shaiken says passing this legislation is about basic American freedoms and a strong economy:

The Employee Free Choice Act reaffirms a basic American right and makes solid economic sense. The right is the freedom to choose a union and the economic sense is a vibrant middle class as a result of union membership.

In this case, democracy pays a dividend.

 

 

Print This Article | E-Mail This Article |Comments (6)