Pass Bill to Bolster Unions, Work Force

(Democrat & Chronicle)By James V. Bertolone

(April 12, 2007) — The U.S. House recently passed the Employee Free Choice Act, which is needed to restore our nation's middle class.

The EFCA would require a company to recognize a union when a majority of workers sign union authorization cards. It also would establish stronger penalties for violations of labor laws when workers seek to join a union and would provide for mediation and arbitration for first contract disputes.

While critics claim that EFCA would deny workers the vote on creating a union, under EFCA, as few as one-third of workers in a workplace may require a secret-ballot vote supervised by the National Labor Relations Board.

The democratic rights to join a union and to bargain collectively are protected by the Wagner Act; the freedom of association is guaranteed by our Constitution and by Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which our country signed in 1948. These rights have been destroyed by the corporate agenda over the last 25 years. Polling by Peter D. Hart Research Associates in 2006 shows that 59 million Americans would vote for a union tomorrow if they were not afraid for their jobs. According to government statistics, union workers earn on average 30 percent more than workers who do not have a union, and they are much more likely to have health care coverage and pensions.

If the right to engage in union activity and to join a union is protected by law, why is the EFCA needed? Because corporate America pays millions of dollars to consultants and lawyers expert in staving off unions. Mandatory employee meetings are held on the clock where employers threaten that unionization would send jobs off-shore.

Without a collectively bargained union contract, workers can be terminated for almost any reason or no reason.

Workers from across the country testified before Congress, workers like Bill Lawhorn, who testified that he was fired by Consolidated Biscuit in McComb, Ohio, for supporting a union. He won his government case against his employer, but 4 ½ years after being fired he has not been rehired or received a cent of back pay as the corporate attorneys appeal and delay.

Even when a union election is won, employers can drag out the process for years, in many cases never achieving a first contract. However, under EFCA, failure to negotiate a contract within a reasonable period would result in binding arbitration

Throughout our history the majority worked long hours but existed below the poverty level until the passage of the Wagner Act protecting the right to join a union and bargain collectively.

Between 1950 and 1980, when on average about one-third of workers belonged to unions, that membership raised all boats. During that 30 years, our country produced more wealth for more people than any country in history.

However, since 1980, worker productivity has risen 71 percent while real wages have risen only 4 percent.

Unions, the only democratic institutions run solely by and for workers, are responsible for laws that gave non-union workers a safety net — for starters, minimum wages, overtime, unemployment insurance, Social Security and safety laws — while setting the standards for other benefits such as health insurance and paid vacations and holidays.

The biggest insult is for spokespeople for these same corporations to claim they oppose the EFCA because they are for "democracy" in their workplaces.

Those of us who remember the brutality and terrorist murders of both black and white civil rights workers during Jim Crow, especially while they tried to register African Americans to vote, saw that civil rights and workers' rights were part of the same movement — the quest for human rights. We saw it in the sanitation workers strike in 1968 in Memphis, where Martin Luther King was murdered. We saw it in California where Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huertas were organizing the people of color who harvested our food and were beaten by rich landowners.

However, the one constant threat in the push for the 1965 Voting Rights Act was white employers threatening their black employees with job loss if they voted or even registered to vote. America needed the Voting Rights Act then, and America's workers need the Employee Free Choice Act now.

Bertolone is president, Rochester and Genesee Valley Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, and president, American Postal Workers Union, Local 215.

Published on April 12, 2007: Democrat & Chronicle