Bernard Pollack, AFL-CIO field coordinator, sends us this report on an action in Ohio where workers rallied in support of the Employee Free Choice Act. 

More than 200 local workers and labor and community leaders gathered yesterday to call on Sen. George Voinovich (R) to vote for the Employee Free Choice Act—legislation that would make it more difficult for employers to thwart workers’ efforts to form unions to bargain for better wages and benefits. 

AFL-CIO Organizing Director Stewart Acuff, Ohio AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Pierrette “Petee” Talley, local clergy and hundreds of workers joined a march organized in partnership with Jobs with Justice as they delivered thousands of postcards to Sen. Voinovich’s Columbus office. Four workers told their stories about the opposition they faced in trying to form a union and secure a first contract.

Acuff told the crowd:

We all feel total squeeze on the middle class. That squeeze is real. It is the central economic fact of life.

We are suffering from a 30-year assault on workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain collectively. That assault has now effectively denied workers any right to organize. And that has translated into the middle-class squeeze.

The only way to strengthen and expand America’s middle class is to make sure workers have the freedom to form unions and bargain collectively.

This rally and march in Columbus is one of nearly 75 events planned in more than 40 states in the coming days to draw national attention to the Employee Free Choice Act. Thousands are expected in Washington, D.C., for a massive rally on June 19, with scores of solidarity events taking place that day across the country. Events also are scheduled across Ohio in Toledo, Cleveland, Dayton and other cities.

The U.S. Senate begins debate on the Employee Free Choice Act on Monday, with a vote likely by midweek. These actions follow a National Call-In Week that generated thousands of calls to U.S. senators in support of the legislation. The House approved the Employee Free Choice Act in March. 

Speaking in Columbus, Acuff talked about the importance of taking action to pass the Employee Free Choice Act (see video).

Right now, is the time to call, to write, to e-mail, to lobby, to rally, to march, to do whatever we can to call on the U.S. Senate to pass the most important piece of legislation for working families in America in 70 years: The Employee Free Choice Act. It is critical to strengthening the American middle class.

The bill restores balance to the system of forming unions and bargaining by giving workers, not bosses, the option of deciding how they will choose whether to form a union—either through ballot elections or majority sign-up, a process that enables people to form unions when a majority of employees indicate in writing they want one. More than half of people who don’t already have a union say they would join one tomorrow if given the chance, according to national research by Peter D. Hart Research Associates.

Yet employers routinely harass, intimidate and even fire workers who try to form a union, and labor law is helpless to stop them. One out of five union activists are likely to be fired when they try to form unions, according to a new study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

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