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America’s Real Patriot Act: The Employee Free Choice Act |
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When America’s founders crafted the Constitution, they knew more was needed to ensure the survival of democracy. So they created the Bill of Rights. They made sure that at the top of the list, the First Amendment included such rights as the freedom of assembly. That is, the freedom of all of us to gather together in groups of our choosing. Like, say, unions.
Some opponents of workers’ freedom to form unions seem to have forgotten that forming groups outside government—and corporate—purview is critical to a free nation. In Big Brother-speak, these corporate hacks are attacking the proposed Employee Free Choice Act—which would enable more employees and workers to have the freedom to form unions—as unconstitutional.
Here’s what’s really outrageous:
- Managers following employees and workers to the bathroom and around the workplace to harass them for seeking to form a union.
- Workers so intimidated by employers, they become scared of voting in a ballot for a union so they vote against the union or don’t vote at all, fearing that if they do, they’ll lose their job.
Employers spending millions of dollars to fight workers’ efforts to unionize, so they won’t have to provide workers with decent health care and retirement security.
The mindset exhibited by some southern Republican senators to import the low-wages, no benefits, no genuine union representation model of China and Bangladesh to the United States, enserfing U.S. workers in a perpetual cycle of poverty.
In fact, those who assert workers have no freedom of assembly demonstrate the same un-Americanism as those who sought to make middle-class autoworkers the enemy by championing the expansion of lower-paid, minimal benefit jobs generated by foreign manufacturers.
Opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act now are trying to wrap themselves in the notion of “freedom of speech”—that is, employers’ freedom of speech, not workers’. It’s the same tired argument that Big Business used when lobbying for the Taft-Hartley Act. At that time, corporate interests asserted the National Labor Relations Act didn’t give management enough ‘free speech.’ So Taft-Hartley, which passed in 1947, gave Management Inc. carte blanche to undermine unionization efforts that today, according to research by Cornell University professor Dr. Kate Bronfenbrenner:
- Ninety-two 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; 80 percent require supervisors to attend training sessions on attacking unions; and 78 percent require that supervisors deliver anti-union messages to workers they oversee.
- Seventy-five percent hire outside consultants to run anti-union campaigns, often based on mass psychology and distorting the law.
- Half of employers threaten to shut down partially or totally if employees join together in a union.
- In 25 percent of organizing campaigns, private-sector employers illegally fire workers because they want to form a union.
So when you hear opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act sniveling about (employer) free speech, beware.
Another argument supposedly showing the Employee Free Choice Act is unconstitutional (this one is so obscure it won’t be getting much steam) is it would violate the Fifth Amendment “takings” clause. The proposed Employee Free Choice Act would require binding arbitration if a contract can’t be reached within a certain time. As Publius points out on Obsidian Wings:
The point of this requirement is to prevent employers from bargaining in bad faith to run out the clock (employers are free to de-recognize the union after a year.)
Dr. Bronfenbrenner’s research finds that even after workers successfully form a union, employers do not negotiate a contract in one-third of the instances.
It is important to point out that the “takings” argument was rejected in the 1937 U.S. Supreme Court case law decision, NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp.
Corporations are running scared. They fear that under the Obama administration, America’s workers could actually improve their chances to form unions on the job and thereby attain, or maintain a middle-class standard of living. So Big Business and its minions are throwing out every possible attack against the Employee Free Choice Act, trying to see what will stick.
And showing just how un-American they are in the process.
(This is a cross-post from the Firedoglake blog.)
2 Comments
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i hope that the word gets out on the lies that the republicans spread regarding organizing.
the favorite line is how you can no longer have an election.
they twist words.card check makes it easier,but no one is looking to take away the secret ballot.
Why is organized labor so focused upon the passage of EFCA? Does it think that the corporate controlled Democratic Party will seriously consider it’s passage under present economic conditions?
1. THE CURRENT ECONOMIC COLLAPSE OF CAPITALISM HAS NOW COMPOUNDED THE EFFECTS OF GLOBALIZATION IN DESTROYING THE JOBS AND LIVING STANDARDS OF AMERICAN WORKERS.
2. CORPORATIONS HAVE RUTHLESSLY AND METHODICALLY DONE EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO MAXIMIZE PROFITS IN THIS COUNTRY.
(A/) Most corporations DO NOT PAY FEDERAL TAXES after years of bi-partisan support of tax breaks, moving corporate offices overseas, demanding tax concessions from local governments, etc.
(B). By eliminating employer paid HEALTH CARE INSURANCE, RETIREMENT PLANS, OVERTIME, SAFETY REQUIREMENTS, ETC.ETC. corporations forever try to maximize profit. [Circuit City (now going bankrupt) a year or so ago, fired all it's top pay employees ($15/HOUR plus) but offered their jobs back at $7.50 an hour!)]. I am sure most readers have a whole list of outrageous actions they have experienced or know about.
C. With the elimination of employer supported benefits, the public social services “safety net” has also been systematically destroyed? Why? Because these services require TAXES to finance them. Thus the on-going destruction of public education, public health systems, maintenance of infrastructure, etc.
The “privatization” schemes (to turn public utilities into money-making businesses) destroy the universal accessibility of essential public services. Now 45 million cannot afford health insurance, and will simply die prematurely, as being a part of the genocide of the unprofitable.
This year (2008) and next millions of newly un-employed are being thrown into the dust-bin as “redundant” and “unprofitable” human resources. Millions of working people start realizing they are losing their homes, health insurance, and even can’t afford utilities, adequate food and actually are being impoverished. Their lives of their family and children are immediately being threatened. a condition called “civil unrest” may quickly result.
(Be aware that the U.S. Army, since October, is now deploying THOUSANDS of soldiers from Iraq to deploy in the United States, supposedly to “fight terrorism” but also to quell “civil unrest”. The Bush gang (and now the Obama gand) KNOW the consequences of their actions, even if the people of America are kept in ignorance by the corporate controlled media.).
The “solution” for this mass crises for working people is NOT to give billions to the banks and auto executives who have created these problems. What has the labor movement or working people gained by this massive “bailout”? Absolutely NOTHING…. except more plant closings, massive unemployment, etc.
There is no “bailout” of capitalism that will possibly restore a decent living standard for working people. The intrinsic drive of capitalism for maximization of profit means this destruction of millions of people through impoverishment and inevitably through more wars (today Afghanistan, tommorrow ?) for profits (oil, resources,military hardware, etc.)
The historic “partnership” of labor unions and corporate capitalism must be declared forever finished! The Democratic Party is the “partner” of corporate capital and the impotent begging of labor to please pass this bill is falling on deaf ears.
This run-amok, gangster capitalism is simply not controllable, not reformable.
For the survival of working people and humanity requires that this capitalism must be ended! A transition to a new democratically controlled socialist economy is essential! A socialist economy to fulfill the economic needs of all the people (not to profit only a few), a ecologically sustainable economy (not gangster capitalism which is causing global warming), in which necessary world peace is possible (no more wars for oil, profit and power!)
I appologize for this long “comment”! But working people in the U.S. (including myself and my single-mother daughter, grand children) and globally are being destroyed by existing U.S. and global capitalism! Simplistic bills such as EFCA are totally inadquate for the crisis of personal and family survival we now all must face.
Read daily the World Socialist Web Site. http://www.wsws.org. A small first step is to learn WHY this is all happening!