SEARCH
Massive Mobilization this Weekend in Arkansas for Employee Free Choice Act |
|
This Saturday, Arkansas workers, civil rights activists, faith leaders and union members will come together across Arkansas in support of workers’ freedom to form unions.
Workers and their allies will ask Arkansas’ two senators, Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor, to help pass the Employee Free Choice Act and restore the freedom to form unions and bargain for a better life.
AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka and AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker will be on hand for a march across Little Rock, starting at Central High School at 1 p.m. After the march, they’ll rally and hold a catfish fry at the Arkansas Education Association.
In addition to the main rally in Little Rock, workers and religious leaders will rally in the morning in Pine Bluff, Texarkana and Fort Smith, bringing the message of support for workers all across the state.
As the AFL-CIO’s Stewart Acuff explains at the Huffington Post, the voices of faith leaders and civil rights leaders will be an essential part of this event.
Just as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 opened the doors to greater freedoms for African Americans, the Employee Free Choice Act will open the door for workers to freely form unions and bargain collectively….
Led by Arkansas ministers, the assembled hundreds will march to the State Capitol area for another rally featuring local faith leaders such as Rev. Steve Copley and local elected leaders in an even louder call for Senators Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor to vote for the Employee Free Choice Act.
Union leaders taking part in the day of events will include President Leo Gerard of the United Steelworkers (USW), President Edwin Hill of the Electrical Workers (IBEW), Co-President Deborah Burger, RN, of the California Nurses Association (CNA) and Secretary-Treasurer Jeff Rechenbach of the Communications Workers of America (CWA).
It’s a critical time in the struggle for workers’ freedom to form unions and Saturday’s rally will send a clear message: It’s time to pass the Employee Free Choice Act and make the economy work for everyone again.
5 Comments
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Dear Seth: It is highly unlikely that we will get Balanche (Walmart) Linclon. So my question is: Next year why not go with the Green Party candidate in Arkansas? As you know, the Green Party strongly favors EFCA!
Where is AFSCME? Why isn’t the president of AFSCME, Gerald McEntee, participating?
In Solidarity,
SL, President McEntee hasn’t been scheduled to attend this particular rally, but AFSCME members have been active in the fight for Employee Free Choice.
EMAILED THIS “LETTER TO THE EDITOR” TO NEWSWEEK YESTERDAY OVER AN ARTICLE QUESTIONING THE NEED FOR UNIONS (when it comes to pushing any liberal social issue the media is all over it — but if it is the pocketbook of the average person sometimes they seem like they are working for CATO):
Kevin Kelly’s description of his firm’s beneficial response to a union certification drive is a good advertisement for a union structure used in every other first-world country but Japan and the US (Japan’s domestic economic scene is a wasteful converse* of Japan’s super-efficient face towards the world): something called sector-wide labor agreements, wherein, basically, everyone doing the same job description in the same geographic local works under a single contract with as many firms as there are. In Kelly’s case just the proximity of unionized firms made life for his employees better without any legal compulsion.
French-Canada’s “lite” sector-wide regime merely enforces the same contract conditions negotiated with unionized firms upon non-unionized firms. Canada is right next door with no European (or Australian) surprises; Canada could be a good place to look for how-to pointers. Even second-world (Argentina) and third-world (Indonesia) have found sector-wide contracts to offer advantages: most especially a permanent end to the race to the bottom. No more Wal-Mart entering the retail food business and gutting solidly middle class supermarket employment.
The bottom line on the Employee Free Choice Act is polls that show 50% of private employees wish to be unionized — while only 1 in 14 are. If any state voting system leaned as lopsidedly in favor of one side as our so-called union certification leans in favor of ownership the Supreme Court would be right in throwing the setup out under something equivalent to “one man, one vote”. I would (non-professionally) assert that today’s no vote, no contract anyway setup violates freedom of “economic” assembly (who says it’s impossible).
Over the last few decades, 15%* of income share has slipped out of the pockets of the bottom 90% of earners, mostly into the pockets of the top fraction of 1%. Why “fraction”? $1.2 million* is the average income of top 1 percentile households (2006 figure). Does your over intelligent, over trained, over worked family doctor earn anything like that figure?
This squeeze on the bottom is why we have such difficulty affording the 15% of GDP even with 135%* of other rich economies’ per capita GDP (we work that many more people that many more hours).
Nothing like this has happened in any other modern economy (least of all in super-cartelized Japan). Supermarket and airline workers would kill for sector-wide contracts. Most Americans would gain economically from the Employee Free Choice Act. Why is some kind of union certification process that actually works so hard to put into effect?
* http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0765603101/ref=ord_cart_shr?_encoding=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&v=glance
* http://ontodayspagelinks.blogspot.com/2008/08/income-share.html
* http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=2789
* http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/tabfig/08/SWA06_Tab8.2.jpg
I sincerely offer my best wishes to Brothers and Sisters trying to get any sense into any Arkansas Politician for any Pro Labor Legislation.