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More Governors Show Support as Momentum Grows for Employee Free Choice |
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Even though obstructionist Republican senators temporarily denied workers a free choice to join a union, momentum for the Employee Free Choice Act continues to grow. The grassroots movement behind this legislation is bigger and more exciting than anyone believed last year. Workers are mobilizing to make passage of the bill a key issue in the 2008 elections.
More and more elected officials are lining up behind the bill. We reported that 16 governors signed a letter supporting the Employee Free Choice Act. Now that number has grown to 18 as Govs. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts and Brian Schweitzer of Montana, both Democrats, have added their names to those who support allowing workers to join a union without employer interference.
Working families are energized because they have the majority on their side. In addition to the 18 governors, more than 1,350 lawmakers in 70 state, county and city legislative bodies passed resolutions or signed letters supporting Employee Free Choice and seven presidential candidates also are backing the bill. Some 115 religious leaders signed on to a letter backing the bill.
Workers staged nearly 100 actions in the week before the Senate vote and middle-class Americans generated 50,000 phone calls to the Senate, 156,000 faxes and e-mail messages and 220,000 postcards, including 120,000 delivered to the Senate. More than 4,500 workers and elected officials rallied on Capitol Hill to urge support for the legislation.
In the letter, the governors say:
When workers try to form unions, all too often they are harassed, intimidated and even fired for their support of the union. These attacks on workers’ rights, for which there are only weak—if any—remedies, occur all too frequently among the most vulnerable workers of our society, including women, the working poor of all races, and recent immigrants. As a result, those workers who need unions the most are often those who have the least chance of achieving the benefits of unionization.
Click here to read the letter.
In addition to Patrick and Schweitzer, the governors who have signed the letter are presidential candidate Gov. Bill Richardson (N.M.) and Govs. Bill Ritter (Colo.), Rod Blagojevich (Ill.), Chet Culver (Iowa), Kathleen Sebelius (Kan.), John Baldacci (Maine), Martin O’Malley (Md.), Jennifer Granholm (Mich.), Jon Corzine (N.J.), Eliot Spitzer (N.Y.), Ted Strickland (Ohio), Ted Kulongoski (Ore.), Edward Rendell (Pa.), Christine Gregoire (Wash.), Joe Manchin (W. Va.) and Jim Doyle (Wis.).
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[...] Employee Free Choice Act may not have gotten an up or down vote in the Senate, but the AFL-CIO is not giving up on it. The number of governors who have signed a letter supporting the EFCA is now 18, in [...]
James,
Thanks for posting this on the EFCA. Over at Union Review we have been actively talking about it as well. As the bill was going to the Senate floor, along with a lot of information reposted from here, we spread the word around.
The EFCA is now coming up as part of articles and comments since the filibuster. What is interesting for us is we have a union worker, active at UR, who is AGAINST the EFCA. The worker has interesting points, but not many seem to agree with him at all.
What can we do, as a community, talk to doubters of the EFCA … aside from the actual facts that we all know and repeat over and over? If you ever want to get in on the last of these threads, the link is here: http://unionreview.com/big-business-anti-unionism-still-cranking-along-enterprise-rent-car
The reader who posted the original article to get the discussion moving along pulled the AFL-CIO piece. When our friend began his anti-EFCA banter, we suggested he come here (to the AFL-CIO Now) to post comments as well, but I haven’t seen him on these pages, yet.
When you are not busy, please feel welcomed to come and be part of this and other discussions.
-Richard / Union Review
It is with great pleasure that the Space Coast AFL-CIO,CLC announces that the Democratic Executive Committee of Brevard County Florida passed a resolution of support for the Employee’s Free Choice Act at their July meeting in Cocoa, Florida.
In Brevard we have a situation in our tax collector’s office were the Tax Collector engaged in an anti-union campaign to the tune of $250,000. If it was my tax money the irony would be funny. Mr. Northcutt, tax collector lost his case at the PERC( Public Employee’s Relation Commission) hearing so the workers will have their election anyway. He lost his support from the unionized and organizing workers and lost the support of the taxpayers for wasting their taxes. If any politician could have used the Employee’s Free Choice Act, Mr. Northcutt could be the poster child.
It is encouraging to the Space Coast CLC that a political party would take a stand on employee’s right in this “right to work” state. May success favor both the Democrats and the CLC in their endeavor to bring worker’s rights to all levels of government.
This is great news!
As a displaced New Yorker in South Florida, the state is … well, very odd.
The need for the EFCA here is so paramount that it is often hard to hear / read people debating the issues. The Miami Herald ran some a few editorials earlier this year that were so anti-union and nonsensical regarding a struggle taking place with a university in Davey, that I ended up writing what would look like a three-page letter to the reporter. (Unfortunately I am guessing my letter hit his spam folder)
Thanks for posting this good news … I will share it with others.
-Richard / UR
[...] More Governors Show Support as Momentum Grows for Employee Free Choice Even though obstructionist Republican senators temporarily denied workers a free choice to join a [...]