by James Parks, Jun 21, 2007

While some 4,500 people rallied Tuesday on Capitol Hill in support of the Employee Free Choice Act, thousands more workers in 110 cities across the country also are sending a message this week to their lawmakers to pass this important legislation.

The bill (H.R 800 and S. 1041), which passed the House in March, now is on the Senate floor. If enacted, it would level the playing field and allow workers to choose a union without employer interference.

Momentum for the legislation is growing daily as workers realize its significance. Across the country, workers are telling stories of how they were stymied in efforts to exercise their freedom to form a union and are demanding a change.    

In Tampa, Fla., union members delivered more than 500 letters to the office of Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) thanking him for co-sponsoring the Employee Free Choice Act. The same members took 500 letters of concern to Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.), asking him to reconsider his opposition to the legislation. Click here to see if your senator is a co-sponsor.

The Tampa workers ended their day of action by conducting an informational picket outside a Verizon office to highlight the struggle by workers there to form a union. After Verizon bought MCI in 2005, it created a separate business unit, Verizon Business, to wall off the former MCI workers from unionized employees who perform the same job functions, according to union leaders. Union workers have campaigned to “Tear Down the Wall” and help their Verizon Business co-workers win bargaining rights.

In Maine, workers marched and rallied Tuesday in four cities—Augusta, Bangor, Lewiston and Portland—to urge the state’s Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins to support workers’ free choice. The rallies followed a week of actions in which workers delivered more than 3,000 signed postcards each to Snowe’s and Collins’ offices in Augusta. Last week, 15 Maine religious leaders held a press conference to present a letter they had signed backing the legislation.

In Columbus, Ohio, 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. 

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  Voinovich’s office in Columbus. 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 a 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.

Amelia Rivera has lived through that kind of employer assault on workers. Rivera, who works at the Caesars casino in Atlantic City, N.J., where workers chose a union, told the Capitol Hill rally that workers at Trump Arena and the Hilton in Atlantic City were subjected to strong anti-union campaigns.

After months and months of enduring intimidation, one-on-one meetings and daily harassment, the workers were not able to withsatnd their employers’ anti-union campaign.

I know how scared they were on election day. I know how scared they are now. They didn’t have a choice. The deck was stacked against them. (See video.)  

Workers in Minnesota used the cable TV show, “Minnesota at Work,” to feature employees at the Holiday Inn Express in Rochester who were fired after a new owner came in and let workers go just before Christmas in the midst of an effort to form a union there.

In the video, when workers ask Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) how he plans to vote on the Employee Free Choice Act, he falsely says the act would take away workers’ right to a secret ballot. In reality, the Employee Free Choice Act would ensure that workers have the choice between secret-ballot elections and majority sign-up, or card-check—and thus would expand workers’ options for forming unions. (See video.)

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