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Obama, Union Members Nationwide Focus on Employee Free Choice |
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Yesterday, at a town hall meeting in New Mexico, President Obama reaffirmed his support for the Employee Free Choice Act, capping off a busy week of grassroots activity around the country in support of this critical bill.
Obama acknowledged there’s a tough fight ahead, but expressed his concern that current labor law isn’t fair to workers and needs to be changed if we’re going to rebuild the middle class.
…the scales have been tilted to make it really hard to form a union. So a lot of companies, because they want maximum flexibility, they would rather spend a lot of money on consultants and lawyers to prevent a union from forming than they would just going ahead and having the union and then trying to work with—and collectively—allow workers to collectively bargain.
So there’s a bill called the Employee Free Choice Act that would try to even out the playing field. And what it would essentially say is, is that if a majority of workers at a company want a union then they can get a union without delay—and some of the monkey business that’s done right now to prevent them from having a union.
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The broad, diverse coalition supporting the Employee Free Choice Act is fighting hard to solve these problems and turn our economy around. Union members, veterans, religious leaders, business owners and community organizations, large and small, are writing letters to Congress, rallying and getting the word out about the need to restore workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain for a better life.
Union members and allies are taking the debate directly to their members of Congress. In Arkansas, union members and Working America members rallied outside the office of Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D), asking her to support an economy that works for everyone. And in cities across Pennsylvania, including Allentown, Erie and York, union members got together to write letters to Sen. Arlen Specter (D) and watch a new ad asking him to continue his past support of the Employee Free Choice Act. Members of AFSCME in Louisiana, who rallied on the steps of the state Capitol yesterday, brought along more than 100 letters in support of Employee Free Choice to send to Sen. Mary Landrieu (D).
(Speaking of Louisiana, check out this video, where Greg Lavergne and John Green, IBEW 995, Baton Rouge, La., explain why the provisions the Employee Free Choice Act that help workers get a first contract are critical to making sure workers can bargain for a better life.)
The range of supporters speaking out in favor of the Employee Free Choice Act this week include Steve Sanford, a U.S. Army veteran and union member in Maine; Vivian Dwyer, a Virginia businesswoman who works for American Income Life; and union members, academics and business owners who attended community meeting in Philadelphia on Wednesday. Across Florida, union members are getting engaged and turning out at community meetings, while the fight for Employee Free Choice took center stage at the Northern Virginia Central Labor Council’s annual dinner.
As the AFL-CIO’s Stewart Acuff notes at the Huffington Post, the national grassroots movement is letting politicians know that they
…have the power and the obligation to meet the grassroots movement and demand for change with the best kind of change—change that invites average people to move and at on their own behalf, collectively, to organize on the job for a better standard of living and a better quality of life for their own kids and families—and everyone else’s, too.
3 Comments
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Some business owners do think that the playing field has been tilted slightly away from labor unions. But they see EFCA, as it currently is written, as tilting the field way too far in the other direction. Some are saying if certain things are modified in EFCA, such as the so called rapid “card check” provision, and what they see as extreme binding arbitration, that they will not fight it nearly so hard.
The other question I’ve heard is why is it that additional fines will only be against companies, and not towards organized unions? They see this as unfair, as it presupposes unions never do anything underhanded in the organizing efforts. In fairness, we’ve all heard of this on both sides!
The bottom line is I hate to see workers and companies take such an adversarial position. I don’t know that this can be ultimately productive for either.
“Obama acknowledged that there’s a tough fight ahead..” only because he has done nothing to sell the benefits of EFCA to the general public nor his fellow “Democrats” like the phony corporate Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein. Why doesn’t Obama have any influence over the sell-outs in his party who are no better than the right wing Republicans who are blatantly anti-worker? Why does labor keep supporting, with union members’ dues, these anti-labor career politicians like Feinstein and Republicrat Specter? There is no better argument for an independent Labor Party than the betrayal by Demopublican Feinstein and her party’s embrace of Spectre.
I believe with Pres. Obama’s large network developed during the campaign trail needs to utilized in this effort to pass/ put pressure on Congress and the Senate. He needs to be the face of the union movement on this issue and to this point he is not. It has been reported this legislation is not a main part of his agenda. Labor is going to continue to support Sen. Feinstein, but all support should be withdrawn if they vote against this bill. Pres. Obama should not campaign for any Democrats that votes against this bill or tries to change it.
To Right on the left on: Why cant labor have the scales tilted their way like it has been for over 40 yrs.?