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Paul Pimentel from the Sheet Metal Workers, otherwise known as Paul VA, is blogging live today on the Employee Free Choice Act hearings now under way on Capitol Hill. The Employee Free Choice Act (H.R. 800), supported by a bipartisan coalition in Congress, would level the playing field for workers and employers and help rebuild America’s middle class.
Nancy Schiffer, the AFL-CIO associate general counsel, stated what should be obvious for many on the right side of the House Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions. Part of the reason for workers’ fear and part of the reason employers violate the Employee Free Choice Act with impunity is that no effective remedies are imposed and they come months and years too late.
Schiffer asked, “What happens if an employer is prosecuted for illegally threatening workers that it will close or lay off workers if they vote to form a union? Or for illegally spying on workers’ who are supporting a union? Or illegally telling workers that they cannot talk about the union?”
As she explained, after the case is investigated and evaluated, it is litigated in a hearing before an NLRB administrative law judge, appealed to the National Labor Relations Board and enforced in federal court. Only then can the employer be required to take any remedial action whatsoever. It will be required to post a notice on a bulletin board saying that it will not violate the law again.
As she noted, in one of her cases “the notice the employer posted required three 11” x 14” sheets to list all of the violations it had committed. Yet during the time the notice was posted, the employer committed all of the same violations again.”
Schiffer concluded:
The Employee Free Choice Act would reform the NLRA [National Labor Relations Act] so that workers can choose union representation and collective bargaining without fear and intimidation. When a majority of workers demonstrate their choice to form a union, their representative can be certified by the NLRB without the need for the delay-ridden, coercive and divisive NLRB election process.
And it would guarantee that that collective bargaining would be conducted effectively and efficiently and would result in a contract.
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Workers in any type of work place should have the unrestricted freedom to vote to form a union. This country is supposed to be a democracy not a totalitarian state!