Rep. Ellison Shows How to Support Employee Free Choice
As the new Congress kicks off its first week and we prepare for the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama, now is the time for political leaders to speak out for the freedom of workers to form unions and bargain for a better life.
Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) is a great example of how a political leader can educate the public and fight for workers as we work to pass the Employee Free Choice Act.
Ellison and other pro-worker members of Congress have come under fire from deep-pocketed Big Business lobbyists and corporate front groups that are expending millions on disinformation and false attack ads to scare voters and elected officials alike. But Ellison, an Employee Free Choice Act co-sponsor, doesn’t scare so easily.
Rep. Ellison Joins Faith and Labor Leaders in Urging Release of Jailed Workers
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Barb Kucera, editor of Workday Minnesota, follows up on the Indian guest workers who this past spring and summer waged a hunger strike for justice. The welders and pipe fitters had been lured from their native India to the United States with promises of green cards and good jobs at Signal International’s shipyard in Pascagoula, Miss. Once there, they found themselves held in modern-day forced labor, victims of a human-trafficking scheme under the guise of the H-2B guest worker program. Now, 23 of the workers have been jailed by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Community leaders in Minnesota—including Congressman Keith Ellison and the Rev. Craig Johnson, bishop of the Minneapolis Area Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America—issued a call for the release of 23 workers from India held in the Fargo, N.D., jail by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
