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Ask Johanna Moon and Dianne Heeley Why Workers Need Arbitration |
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The freedom to form a union and bargain depends on the ability of workers to get a fair first contract. Unfortunately, the nation’s broken labor law gives companies the ability to deny workers a contract with impunity. The Employee Free Choice Act would change that.
The legislation would provide a process to help negotiators reach an agreement through mediation and, for issues the parties are unable to resolve on their own, arbitration. However, arbitration would occur under the Employee Free Choice Act only if either side requests it, after months of negotiations.
An article published yesterday by the Associated Press examines the growing corporate attacks on this critical provision, quoting a U.S. Chamber of Commerce official calling arbitration “poison.”
The AP article focuses on workers at Central Maine Power Co., who voted for a union and saw no contract for 18 months. But these workers aren’t alone—52 percent of workers have no contract a year after forming a union and 44 percent have no contract after two years. That means thousands of workers are deprived of their basic freedom to bargain for a better life.
Take the case of Johanna Moon. For 25 years, Moon has worked at Trump Plaza casino as a dealer. More than two years ago, Johanna and her co-workers voted overwhelmingly to form a union, but Trump has refused to bargain, meaning that despite choosing a union, there was no real opportunity to bargain for better health care, pensions, wages or working conditions.
Or Dianne Heeley, a Fotomat employee who successfully voted to form a union after a campaign of intimidation by management. Heeley and other Fotomat workers never got a contract.
The arbitration provision in the Employee Free Choice Act is getting viciously attacked by anti-worker corporate groups for one reason—because it will help workers bargain for a fair contract. That’s good for workers and for the whole economy, and it’s why we need to pass the Employee Free Choice Act.
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Interestingly enough, companies use arbitration language as a tool to circumvent consumers ability to utilize the judicial system, but they do not want workers to be able to use it to our percieved advantaged in forming a union and getting a timely contract signed. One example is the credit card companies causing consumers to use an arbitration system. You cannot sue. It’s good enough for them but they don’t want us to have the same process that benefits them.
This is why I’m continually researching more of these sites. Hotrodgreg1957’s point on the credit card companies never ocurred to me. And I watched an hour long PBS special on the credit card mess. As my user name suggests, I am not yet a union member. However I will be going to college to study low voltage electrics (hopefully for a field in home theater installation) and a friend of My Father’s told Him that two of the companies that install home-theater equipment in the area are union-ops (I’m guessing IBEW.) I hope to be a card carrying union member someday, whether it’s IBEW or CWA or whatever collective bargaining unit best fits the field. I’d rather that things are slower in government than to have the streamlined corruption of ‘00-’08, but EFCA must pass now before it’s too late. I hope that Senator Franken’s finally bringing it to the lime-light will move things forward.