Legislation to Strengthen Workers' Rights is Needed

(Rocchester Business Journal)

                             It's time for the Employee Free Choice Act. 

The Employee Free Choice Act (5.1925, H.R. 3619) sponsored by Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Mass) and Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) ensures that when a majority of employees in a workplace decide to form a union, employees can do it without the debilitating obstacles employers now use to block workers' free choice.  This presents an exciting opportunity to strengthen the rights of workers to choose a union freely.  Labor is in the process of obtaining a firm commitment from our elected officials at all levels that they will take a clear stand in support of this bill.  We currently have more than 170 Congresspersons in the House and more than 30 Senators signed up to co-sponsor the Employee Free Choice Act.  We are well on our way to 218 House representatives and 51 Senators for a majority.

Our nation has a proud history of making sure citizens' basic civil and human rights are honored.  That is what the Declaration of Independence was about.  That's what the Womens' Suffragist Movement was about.  That's what the Civil Rights Movement was about.  That is also, of course, what the Labor Movement was and is about, and we have historically been intertwined with our brothers and sisters in the aforementioned movements.  Political and Social Justice is never fully realized without economic justice and the Labor Movement has been the greatest, most successful anti-poverty program in our history.

In 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights guaranteed the right to form and join trade unions, to collective bargaining through representatives of workers’ own choosing, a right that was recognized by our government thirteen years earlier in the National Labor Relations Act.  And yet, Human Rights Watch, an internationally recognized organization that monitors basic human rights, has issued a report calling the routine violation of workers rights in the United States a fundamental human rights issue. 

How bad is it?  Research shows that even though our laws supposedly guarantee America's workers the right to choose for themselves whether to have a union, employers routinely violate that right.  Workers are harassed, intimidated, coerced and fired, just for exercising, or attempting to exercise, this basic freedom.  More than half of America's workers, not represented by Unions, say they would like to join a union, but fear employer retaliation including the loss of their jobs. 

Employers do just about anything to deny workers this basic right.  Twenty-five percent of private sector employers illegally fire workers for supporting a union.  For example, in 1998 roughly 24,000 employees won compensation for being illegally fired or punished for union activity, up from fewer than 1000 in the 1950's and about 6,000 in 1969 according to the Department of Labor. 

Ninety-two percent of employers force workers to attend meetings against the union according to Cornell University researcher Kate Bronfenbrenner.  Current penalties for this illegal activity under the National Labor Relations Act are so minimal that employers treat them as a minor cost of doing business.

The Employee Free Choice Act would require recognition of the union with majority signed authorization, mediation and binding arbitration after 90 days of bargaining without achieving the first contract, and stronger penalties for violations by employers of the National Labor Relations Act during any period in which employees are attempting to organize or negotiate a first contract.  Willful violations could result in civil fines for willful or repeated violations, similar to remedies of human rights violations based on Civil Rights Laws.

The cost illegal union busting tactics to our society has been severe.  A the American middle class is shrinking as union density declines.  A larger disparity has grown between union worker’s wages and non-union worker’s (about $160.00 per week).  Workers losing the right to form unions is an important reason for the decline in real wages, which are now lower when adjusted for inflation  than in 1973, according to the US Department of Labor, despite the fact worker productivity has risen by two-thirds since then. 

 Middle class jobs and lifestyles are under attack despite huge yearly increases in profits and executive pay.  Non-union workers are 53% less likely to have health benefits through their employers and 5 times less likely to have defined benefit pension plan coverage.  Our country's corporations have sold a conventional wisdom that an honest, hard working person, who gives a fair days work for a fair days pay should no longer expect job security or middle class standard of living as the nation's wealth has been redistributed upward to the 10% richest in our society.

Employer abuses of this basic freedom have strained society's safety net, widened race and gender pay gaps, dwindled wages and local tax bases, and reduced decent working conditions and safety standards.

Over the last century, I have been unable to find a country that is democratic and it's people free, without that country also having a strong, free trade union movement.  Without a strong free trade union movement, one finds poverty and repression, often from a brutal government.

It is appropriate that Labor brings this issue to the forefront during the week we celebrate independence.

This is why we urge our elected officials to support the Employee Free Choice Act, EFCA, so that we may restore to workers across our democracy, the fundamental freedom to form unions.  Protecting this freedom is the Labor movement's highest priority and necessary to protect economic justice and democracy.  We will not rest until the Employee Free Choice Act becomes law.