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Fight for Employee Free Choice Act Moves to Senate |
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| Errol Hohrein testifies before a Senate committee in support of the Employee Free Choice Act. |
Working families moved closer today to changing the nation’s labor laws to give workers greater freedom to make their own decisions about joining a union and bargaining for better wages, benefits and working conditions. Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), along with 46 co-sponsors, introduced the Employee Free Choice Act, S. 1041, in the U.S. Senate.
The House passed the Employee Free Choice Act, the most important labor law reform in more than 70 years, on March 1 by a margin of 241–185. The legislation would rein in the employer harassment, intimidation and anti-worker tactics tens of thousands of workers encounter every year when they try to form unions.
Kennedy says, “It’s time to return to a world where workers obtain their fair share of the nation’s economic growth.”
The best way to do so is to give them a stronger voice in the workplace. Unions mean the difference between an economy that is fair and an economy where working people are left behind. The fundamental promise of the American dream is that hard work leads to success and a better life for families.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney says with the Employee Free Choice Act the Senate has “an historic chance to make sure that America works the way it should for everyone.”
A union card is the straightest ticket into a middle class lifestyle with a decent standard of living and the ability to provide for your family. But for too long now, working people have been denied the opportunity to have a union because corporations flagrantly and routinely violate workers’ freedom to form unions, and the law is helpless to stop them. The result is an America where CEOs are showered with lavish pay packages while working people are struggling to make ends meet.
Next week during the congressional spring recess, working families will kick off a campaign to pass the Employee Free Choice Act in the Senate. Workers will place phone calls and send letters from their workplaces to members of the Senate. In meetings scheduled around the country, workers will thank the senators who co-sponsored the legislation and will push for others to sign on. (Click here to see if your senator is a co-sponsor.
Errol Hohrein saw the employer attack on workers forming unions first hand. He and other workers at Front Range Energy in Windsor, Colo., decided they wanted to form a union to bargain for a better life. Even though 90 percent of the workers signed cards demonstrating they wanted to join the United Steelworkers (USW) union, the company refused to honor their choice and accept the results.
If the Employee Free Choice Act were the law today, the signed cards could have been submitted to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) for verification, and the board would have required Front Range to bargain with the union chosen by the employees. But under current law, Front Range has the right to decide whether to honor the employees’ choice or to demand they go through the NLRB election process, which gives the company an opportunity to pressure and harass workers into renouncing their decision to form a union.
Rather than honor the workers’ decision, Front Range managers harassed and threatened employees with job loss, Hohrein told a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing Tuesday.
They forced us to attend meetings where they slammed the union and hardly let us say anything. They said if we went union it would come out of our paychecks…the company questioned everyone on how they were going to vote. They took them into backrooms and browbeat them.…They would follow me around the workplace and not permit me to talk to my co-workers…during the election they stood at the door of the break room where we were voting as a silent reminder of their threats.
Even after the campaign of harassment, the workers voted for a union. Then, when the election was certified, Front Range fired Hohrein.
Hohrein’s experience, unfortunately, is not unique. 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. A strong majority of the public—65 percent—approves of unions, up from 55 percent in 1981. But that same poll, conducted 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.
- 78 percent of private-sector employers force employees to attend one-on-one meetings with their own supervisors against the union.
2 Comments
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These greedy corporate types run scared because they are afraid of having to share their multi-million dollar salaries with the very people who made them rich. Labor studies haved proved that the wages and benefits of mid and first level management people also go up in a company that has a union. Take a lesson from Oprah, share the wealth!
Finally something is going to be done about the shrinking middle class. There seems to only be two classes in the United States today, upper and lower. The government raises the taxes, the utilities and other bills go up, but pay checks remain the same with a “cost of living” increase once a year if you are lucky. And most aren’t that lucky anymore. When is it going to stop?