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Trumka and Economist Schmitt Explain the Need for Employee Free Choice |
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AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka and economist John Schmitt appeared last week on Building Bridges Radio, a nationally syndicated radio show, to discuss the Employee Free Choice Act.
Cutting through misleading corporate rhetoric, Trumka explained what the Employee Free Choice Act does and why it’s needed to restore fairness in the workplace for workers who want to exercise their right to bargain for better benefits, wages and working conditions.
The Employee Free Choice Act puts the choice of how to form a union in the hands of workers. Currently, it’s in the hands of employers, and they like it that way.
The elections that they talk about may sound like the most democratic approach, but the NLRB process is nothing like democratic elections in our society, like presidential elections, for example. Here, one side has all the power—the employer controls the voters’ paychecks, their livelihood, has unlimited access to speak against a union in the workplace while restricting pro-union speech and has the freedom to intimidate and coerce the voters…and they use that freely.
Schmitt, the author of a recent study on workers fired during union campaigns, said in one out of every four union elections, at least one worker is illegally fired.
Our report looks at the worst kind of offense employers bring against workers, which is to fire selected workers that are involved in the organizing campaign. That accomplishes two goals: it takes the leadership out of a union campaign, and that can be a blow in and of itself, but it also sends a message of fear to the rest of the workers involved, that the employer can fire pro-union workers and get away with it because the law is so ineffective.
Schmitt also noted that in nearly three-quarters of union campaigns, companies bring in high-priced, outside, “union avoidance” union-busting consultants to deter workers from exercising their freedom to form a union. Talking about the “asymmetric power relationship” between workers and their bosses, Schmitt noted that employers often use scheduling, overtime and workplace treatment as tools to deter their workers from choosing a union.
Trumka noted that the penalties for abusive behavior by employers, including illegal firing, are minimal, and that the Employee Free Choice Act includes much stronger penalties so as to make sure these offenses against workers aren’t routine behavior.
Trumka also detailed some of the corporate front groups viciously opposing this critical bill to protect workers and the tactics that they’ll be dumping hundreds of millions of dollars into.
It’s a comprehensive and valuable discussion of the Employee Free Choice Act. You can listen to the full radio broadcast of Trumka and Schmitt’s appearance here.
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Dear Rich Templin:
cc: Joellen Sanders, NY, NY.
I have no idea if I am addressing this to the correct source… However, if I can get your attention, maybe, just maybe, I can have an allie to help initiate or sustain an effort to help hospital employees across this beautiful country of ours.
My wife has been a Certified Nurses Aide for the past 30 years. She is a dedicated, hard working employee recognized as excellent by both her fellow employees and management. But if the hospital where she works, Brooksville Regional Hospital in Brooksville, FL, gets wind of this, I have no doubt she’ll be fired. Please, for her sake, don’t let that happen.
I probably do not need to tell you of the difficult and dangerous working conditions these employees are subject to… But let me just refresh your perception a little.
The Nurses Aides are about the only personnel left having direct, hands-on care for patients. They do all of the heavy lifting, cleaning, feeding, taking vitals, grooming, preparation of room and bed and even to readying and delivering the patient to the exit doorway after recovery; and if they should, God forbid, not get well but die, then they are also required to ready the body for transport in a dignified and presentable manner with compassion and professional care. Today, right now, they are being saddled with more and more technical responsibilities that, the nurses use to have… like taking vitals and administering diabetic medications and more…
It has been a progression ever since the liability cost of insurances for Doctors has increased. It has caused the doctors to step back from spending more time with patients and has evolved to the nurses also… Believe me, I am not accussing all of the nurses and doctors of either shirking their professional responsibility or having any less empathy for their patients. It is a subterfuge of concern about the potential of lawsuits and liabilty cost to the individual that is causing the burden of hands-on care to shift ever more and more to the lowest paid and least protected worker, the Certified Nurses Aide.
It is not enough that they have the burden of physical and hands-on care responsibilities, but they are also saddled with the added burden of being required to look after more patients than any nurses are required to do. Sometimes this can be as many as 4 to 1.
This would even be an unfair ratio even if they were making the same amount of pay as a nurse, but as you and I both know, their average pay is less than half as much.
But it isn’t the pay I am concerned about the most. It is the unfair burden of the numbers of patient reponsibility increasing their heavy physical lifting and technical monitoring care.
This combined with the fact that any nurse or doctor can require the Aide to have to drop what ever care they are in the process of doing for a patient to come, literally running, to any doctors or nurses request for assistance. This can be dangerous for the patients.
Because of the increased burdens on all, a deteriorating number of workers, time allowed to do the work neccessary, or to properly, both care for, and pass on vital communications is suffering.
I would be ignorant to even begin outlining these unfair increase of burdens if I did not have, at least, some recommendation. This is my sorry attempt… Why me instead of the workers involved? Because they are afraid of losing their jobs!
I believe each nurse should be assigned to work with only one aide and both have only the same number of and same patients to be responsible for. Of course, I recognize that there are circumstance where there must be some lateral lieniency to help assist others as neccesary. Note, i is a common practice for a majority of nurses not to help the Aides… This is a fact that has been documented. Oh, it is a common thread throughout hospitals that they ask their nurses to help the aides, but it doesn’t happen in reality. Many think it is beneath thier job classification. Many claim to be too busy with their own work…
My wife chose to continue to be a Certified Nurses Aide instead of progressing on to becoming a nurse just because she recognized the vital and compassionate needs the patients were no longer getting from both the doctors and the nurses. She loves that work. However, being saddled ever more and more with increased numbers of patients and responsibilities the stress and physical labor is causing many aides to break down in tears daily from the work. And they are the ones most exposed to the direct contact with patients causing them ever more to be the ones to be most susceptible to patient’s contagious maladies. My wife has suffered through having to be hospitalized with just such; and where, once, the hospital, recognizing these potentials used to not charge their employees with hospital cost, now they are billing them, us… It is more than we can bear in just being able to meet the doctors, radiologist, anetheisiast, and added medication cost, let alone to have a reduction in pay and be saddled with paying the hospital bill levied by the very place where she works and most likely, by the doctors own words, picked-up the sickness in the first place.
I have written to many of our represenatives outlining this growing problem from Presidents to local officials. I have not had any positive response.
Now, with the economy in the shambles it is, my wife has just had an $18.00 a week cut in pay by the hospital no longer putting their fair share of matching funds into her 401k, and she is due to retire in just about five more short years.
I fear with her dedication, being saddled with so much work to the point of out of a 12 hour daily shift, she no longer has time to take a a regular break, and feeling the stress and pressures to fulfill all of her patients needs, I fear, she will not make it to retirement.
Perhaps you can direct me toward someone who would be willing to run this gauntlet with, not just me, but with and for all of the Certified Nurses Aides across our Country.
My wife’s brother Tom Braden was a negotiator for the Retail Clerks Union out of Dayton, OH. I have been a member of 5 different unions. Surely, working together, we can find the courage and strength to unionize these dedicated and hard working citizens so they are teated fairly and with deserved pay and compensations.
I thank you for your time and patience.
Mike Farahay…
husband of Naomi Farahay, the most dedicated and hardworking Certified Nurses Aide ever…