SEARCH
New Hampshire Workers Jump Through Hoops for Employee Free Choice |
|
 |
|
One day after the New Hampshire legislature approved a bill allowing state employees to form unions through majority sign-up, hundreds of workers rallied for a national law making it easier to join a union.
Union and community members participated in an obstacle course outside the office of Sen. John Sununu (R-N.H.) in Manchester to show the obstructions workers face when trying to exercise their freedom to form a union through the cumbersome, government-run election process.
Rally participants moved down a winding path and jumped through hoops labeled “Forced Meetings” and “Firings”—all the while attempting to reach a ballot box. They also had an opportunity to follow a straight path—majority sign-up—labeled “This way to the middle class,” which led to the Employee Free Choice Act.
Participants called on Sununu to support the Employee Free Choice Act, which would enable workers to decide how they want to choose a union. The act would give workers the option to use majority sign-up, which is much faster than the management-controlled representation election process and leaves less time for employers to harass and intimidate workers to discourage them from joining unions. A delegation also delivered hundreds of postcards to Sununu asking him to support the bill.
Says New Hampshire AFL-CIO President Mark MacKenzie:
We are out here today, leaping through hoops because this is what workers are forced to do in order to get to a union election, let alone win a voice at work. Our national labor law is broken, and we have a chance to fix it by passing the Employee Free Choice Act.
The U.S. House passed the Employee Free Choice Act in March, and the Senate is expected to take up the legislation (S. 1041) later this month. Sununu has not indicated which way he will vote on the bill.
“More and more political and community leaders are talking about strengthening and restoring the middle class,” MacKenzie says.
One of the surest ways for the average worker to gain access to the middle class is through collective bargaining. Workers who collectively bargain with their employer are more likely to have a livable wage, health insurance and retirement security.
1 Comment
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
I’m a member of the NFIB, “the voice of small business,” and am upset at the way they’ve misrepresented the Employee Free Choice Act to us small businessmen. The typical NFIB member has 5 employees.
They claim that a secret ballot is necessary for a democratic election….when there are only 5 people voting, there simply is not enough anonymity for a secret ballot to matter. Let alone that most of us don’t have enough interstate trade to fall under Federal regulations.
Look at their BS position at http://www.nfib.com Keeping labor law enforcement crippled only helps big business, like Walmart, who can take advantages of the economy of scale of wholesale worker’s rights abuse. And I pay for NFIB, to lobby for me (small business) and yet they’ve obviously been lobbied by some GOP or big business concern.
Color me angry.