Rabbis Tell Specter: Join Us in Supporting Employee Free Choice

by Seth Michaels, May 14, 2009

Keeping up the pressure on Sen. Arlen Specter to support workers’ freedom to form unions, a group of 30 Pennsylvania rabbis, along with rabbinical students and a rabbinical studies professor, have penned an open letter asking Specter to once again sign on in support of the Employee Free Choice Act.

The letter, published as an ad in the Philadelphia-area newspaper Jewish Exponent, reports that the Huffington Post states the Employee Free Choice Act would re-establish a sense of balance in our economy and restore workplace democracy and fairness. (You can read the letter here.)

Support for workers and for their ability to get a fair shake is a fundamental value, the letter says:

It is not always easy to translate the sanctity of labor into terms that have meaning today, a time in which the marketplace seems to have been elevated above all other holy altars. We believe that the Employee Free Choice Act presents an opportunity to give concrete meaning to the often frustrated dream of a just society.

…it provides an effective and concrete way for workers to form and join unions. And it opens a path toward transformational change. Adoption of the Employee Free Choice Act would give working people the strength and the opportunity to emerge from the despair that so often encumbers their lives.

The rabbis and rabbinical students, brought together by the Jewish Labor Committee, criticize the “smear campaign” against the Employee Free Choice Act and explain, clearly and cogently, how current labor law fails to live up to the standard of giving workers a free and fair shot at joining a union.

These rabbis join several other organizations across the Jewish community in supporting workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain, including Tikkun, the Jewish Labor Committee, Jews United for Justice, Uri L’Tzedek and the Progressive Jewish Alliance.

Let’s hope Sen. Specter is listening.

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