Acuff Debates Chamber Honcho as Employee Free Choice Gains Momentum

by Seth Michaels, May 22, 2009

As part of the national campaign for the Employee Free Choice Act, the AFL-CIO’s Stewart Acuff has been traveling the country to get out the message and help unions mobilize. On his recent trip to Indiana, he got a chance to debate with one of the bill’s most prominent opponents—Randel Johnson, a vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce—at the Indiana University law school. It was a great opportunity to explain why we need new law to protect workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain.

Acuff tells the powerful story of rising worker productivity that hasn’t been matched by improvements in wages. Instead, workers face rising heath care costs and economic insecurity, which have led to unsustainable debt, the collapse of purchasing power and, ultimately, the current economic crisis. What happened, Acuff asks, to cause this imbalance?

There has been a systematic, strategic assault on workers, on unions and on the freedom to form unions and bargain collectively. We’re the only democracy in the world today where workers do not have the fundamental freedom to form unions and bargain collectively.

They have the freedom, guaranteed in the law, if they’re willing to risk their car, their house, their livelihood and their job. Last year more than 29,000 workers were retaliated against or fired for trying to exercise that legally protected union activity. Our law has no teeth: 40 percent of all the workers who jump through all the hoops to form a union will never get a first contract, will never get the fruit of collective bargaining.

Union members in Milwaukee rally for Employee Free Choice.

Acuff vividly describes how this dynamic has kept workers from achieving a better life for themselves, their families and their communities, and why we need the Employee Free Choice Act to turn the economy around and let workers get a fair share of the prosperity they create. You can watch the whole debate online. Check out Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5 as well as the question-and-answer sessions 1, 2, 3 and 4.

Workers’ freedom to form unions continues to receive strong support from a broad array of allies, including small business owners, civil rights activists and scholars in the academic community. In The Missoulian, University of Montana assistant professor Daisy Rooks writes a great op-ed about why she supports Employee Free Choice. Rooks recognizes the decline of the ability to form unions, and the inadequacy of current law to protect workers, and notes:

I see this as problematic not only because it has contributed to the decline of the middle class, but because it has left many workers without a real voice at work, which studies show is just as important to workers as wages and benefits.

Many workers, knowing that the law will not protect them and that the employer holds all the power in the workplace, decide not to risk asserting their collective voice. This is a tragedy for workers who want to work together to raise their wages, better their working conditions and improve their company. But it is also a tragedy for American democracy.

James Nelson, a small business owner in Louisiana, agrees that Employee Free Choice is critical to a strong, fair economy:

The simple fact is that folks need to have a choice. If they decide that there’s a majority that wants to create a union, I think they should be able to do so without being harassed. A lot of people talk about how it’s going to affect the economy, but what I believe is that if people are making more money, they’re going spend more money. The Employee Free Choice Act will give people an opportunity to better themselves, to have a better job with better pay.

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