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National Ad Campaign Urges New Congress to Pass Employee Free Choice |
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As the nation’s economy continues its tailspin, the American public is hungry for measures to strengthen the middle class. With the new 111th Congress set to convene in less than two months, a broad coalition of progressive groups is making sure the lawmakers and the new president hear the message loud and clear that the Employee Free Choice Act must be a key part of efforts to rebuild the economy.
Yesterday, the workers’ advocacy group American Rights at Work launched the first issue advertising campaign for the new Congress. The nationwide TV ad campaign reminds lawmakers of the broad public support for the Employee Free Choice Act, which would give working people the freedom to make their own decision about whether and how to form a union. (Check out the video above.)
The Employee Free Choice Act has overwhelming support. In a poll conducted last week for American Rights at Work, Peter D. Hart Research Associates found 60 percent of voters said it is important to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, and nearly one-third (31 percent) of voters strongly believe it should be a priority for Congress.
You can take action to help pass the Employee Free Choice Act. Join the more than 1 million people who have already signed cards and petitions as part of the union movement’s Million-Member Mobilization to call on the new Congress to immediately pass and the new president to sign the legislation when they take office in 2009. You can show your support for the Employee Free Choice Act by clicking here to sign our online card.
When the new Congress comes to Washington, the cards and petitions will be presented to the congressional leadership and displayed in the U.S. Capitol to show the massive support for the Employee Free Choice Act.
Says American Rights at Work Chairman David Bonior:
If a majority of workers want a union, they should get one—it’s that simple. The reality is they can’t. That’s why Americans are calling resoundingly for new economic policies that restore the middle class and rebuild our economy so that it works for everyone again, not just CEOs and corporate special interests.
President-elect Barack Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden are co-sponsors of the bill and a majority of the incoming Congress also solidly backs the measure.
Working people are struggling to make ends meet and the Employee Free Choice Act will allow more people to bargain for better wages and working conditions—which in turn helps rebuild our middle class and create an economy that works for all.
Or as Bonior puts it:
Our new policymakers know this is a critical vehicle in the economic recovery for Main Street. We need the Employee Free Choice Act to restore the balance, giving men and women the freedom to form unions and get better health care, job security, and benefits, and an opportunity to pursue their dreams.
While all workers will gain from passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, the bill could have a big impact on workers of color. Glen Ford, executive editor of the Black Agenda Report, points out that before the current recession, African Americans accounted for one of five union members in the United States. Since then, he says:
a disproportionate share of blacks have lost their good-paying jobs in the manufacturing sector, stripping unions of their most militant members. When workers have unions, each group strengthens the other, rather than undercutting each other’s wages. Union power outlasts presidential administrations, and is capable of making change on its own. It is, to paraphrase the TV commercial, “priceless.”
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I support the card check bill as one — outdated — way to get around the obstacle course placed in the way of union organizing votes — nobody should have to run the gauntlet just to vote on an political or economic level.
But why is the only proposal on the table an early twentieth century labor law — retread — that some smart labor lawyer luckily spotted a few years back — suppose he hadn’t spotted it; can’t we think for ourselves?
The late twentieth century answer to the race to the bottom — to Wal-Mart killing the pay scales of legitimate workplaces — is SECTOR-WIDE labor agreements: where everybody doing the same job in the same geographic locale must under law work under a common collective bargaining contract even for different firms.
Wal-Mart just closed 88 big boxes in Germany because it could not make out paying the same wages and benefits as everyone else. Supermarket workers and airline employees here would kill for sector-wide agreements.
Germany has the most comprehensive version of sector-wide — France has a “lite” version where nonunion firms must work under contracts negotiated by union firms. French-Canada has the latter. Our economy is almost the same as French-Canada — it should be no trouble to incorporate sector-wide “lite” here.
Under German style sector-wide scabs should not exist because everybody must work under the same contract — and scabs have no contract.
Argentina (second-world) uses sector-wide. Indonesia (third-world) uses sector-wide. Even if we get card check here, American labor law will still be behind the third-world. What are we fourth-world?
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Best graph of (de-unionized and even sometimes unionized) American labor getting its throat cut since the 1970s:
http://delong.typepad.com/delongslides/2008/08/income-gains-19.html
And remember, the folks at the bottom have really had their throats cut — LBJ’s 1968 minimum wage ($10/hr adjusted) is 2008’s 10 percentile wage (double the average income later).
Since Obama has been said to assert that raising income of those at median and below is THE measure of his success, and since he has spoken of the essentiality of unions, HE should be thus quoted in ads.
Its about time the Employee Free Choice Act was passed. This law brings back a workers right of free speech in the workplace, where it is a protected right to talk about forming a union without being fired. Also, the right for a group of workers in a free market system to organize in order to bargain collectively for the betterment of Wages, Hours and Working conditions. The current system now denies these basic freedoms in the workplace. It is a sad state of affairs when large corporations have partnered with Government agencies to deny American workers to organize and bargain collectively by taking away this right and the right of free speech.
This is a warning to all union members! This NONSECRET ballot will be a disaster for the UAW and AFL-CIO! If such a law is passed, there will be many persons, such as myself, that will REFUSE to purchase any items produced in the United States by union employees. This includes American automobiles built by UAW employees. If you want to unionize other companies such as Walmart, do it in Democratic fashion….the secret ballot. But don’t force it on people, like this bill does! Mark my words, there will be such a backlash, that it will hurt, not help, union employees.