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Worker Freedom Bill Passes West Virginia House |
Workers won a big victory this week when the West Virginia House of Delegates passed by a nearly 2-to-1 margin one of top priorities of working families. The so-called “Worker Freedom Bill” prevents employers from forcing employees to attend meetings supporting the bosses’ political candidates or spouting anti-union rhetoric.
The bill (H.B. 4132), which passed the House with a 64–33 majority, now goes to the State Senate.
Sherry Breeden, political director for the West Virginia AFL-CIO, says:
We just want a level playing field. We just want workers to have the freedom to choose to walk away and not listen without repercussions.
Widespread support from union members across the state, as well as support from community and religious groups, provided the key to victory, says Kenneth Perdue, president of the state federation:
The business community didn’t think we could do it. This success is the result of several years of hard work creating new contacts in the legislature and building alliances with other groups to advance the cause of working people.
Delegate Mike Burdiss (D), former state political director for the Mine Workers, told the Charleston Gazette:
It’s just one of these things where you have the right not to listen and can walk away.
Burdiss said his grandson, who works in a nonunion mine, shouldn’t be forced to hear the nonunion rhetoric if he chooses.
Captive-audience meetings are just one of many tactics employers use to suppress workers’ freedom to form or join a union. Cornell University scholar Kate Bronfenbrenner studied hundreds of organizing campaigns and found that 92 percent of private-sector employers, when faced with employees who want to join together in a union, force employees to attend closed-door meetings to hear anti-union propaganda. She also found that 80 percent of employers require supervisors to attend training sessions on attacking unions and that 78 percent require supervisors to deliver anti-union messages to workers they oversee.
The Employee Free Choice Act, which the AFL-CIO and its allies have been working to pass in Congress, would allow workers to choose for themselves how to form a union.
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As a veteran of captive meetings (It took six years for me to come to the light), I know how powerful they are-and how much crap you can cram in them. This is very true in areas where is there is little or nounion history. Meaning the labor movements future. Wether so called professional or over looked low wage jobs these folks are easy for the boss to move to action.
This a step in the right direction.Congratulations to Wv’s legislature.