Employee Free Choice Gains Backing of Broad Range of Groups

by James Parks, Dec 11, 2008

The momentum for the Employee Free Choice Act is growing and the legislation is gaining a broad spectrum of backers. The range of support shows how much the public understands that a strong union movement can benefit the economy and the nation.

At the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Poznan, Poland, one of the largest environmental groups, the Natural Resources Defense Council, announced its support of the bill, which would level the playing field by allowing workers to choose how to join a union. Also at the conference, the Sierra Club reiterated its support.

During the 2008 election, Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, said the bill is essential to building a new green economy. 

An economy that treats workers fairly is one that is also fundamentally better for our planet. We and our allies in the labor movement understand that building the clean energy economy will revitalize our troubled economy, rebuild the middle class with millions of new jobs that can’t be shipped overseas, and make America more secure. Both together and separately we are taking this important message to the millions of voters in battleground states that will decide the outcome of this election.

Working people have made passage of the bill their top legislative priority. Both President-elect Barack Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden co-sponsored it when they were in the Senate. 

Recently, the National Baptist Convention of America (NBCA), one of the nation’s largest African American religious groups with 3 million members, announced its support of the bill. In a letter to AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, the Rev. Samuel Tolbert, general secretary of the NBCA, writes:

The (NBCA) will join with you in raising the level of awareness of our leadership and our membership of the importance of workers across the spectrum having the right to form and join a union if they so choose.

I continue to believe that workers have a right to have a voice in the process that determines their wages, hours and conditions of employment.

Other groups that have recently signed on in support of the bill include the Alliance for Justice, New Democrat Network, Friends Committee on National Legislation, National Organization for Women, Human Rights Campaign, Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety, National Partnership for Women and Families, People for the American Way, Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, League of Rural Voters, Gamaliel Foundation-Transportation Equity Network, National Association of Consumer Advocates and the National Consumers League.

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