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Union trades rally for Employee Free Choice Act

Date Posted: October 31 2008

'If you will help us get Barack Obama elected and a Democratic majority in the House and Senate, we will do that next year'
- Congressman John Dingell (D-15th District)

DETROIT - More than 2,000 trade union members from around Michigan marched to a parking lot next to the McNamara federal building on Saturday morning, Oct. 18, and got an earful about what's not working for working people in America these days.

Namely they heard about federal labor law and the Employee Free Choice Act, and which candidate is likely to support pro-worker changes (Barack Obama) and which candidate is likely to keep things the way they are (John McCain).

The location of the rally was symbolically held next to the high-rise building along Michigan Avenue that houses the National Labor Relations Board headquarters for Detroit and Michigan. Unions have accused the Republican majority on the NLRB as being the poster children for the assault on the nation's working class, and putting the business community in front of American workers' right to organize.

The rally was organized by Justice For Workers Now, a group led by Michigan Pipe Trades organizer Mark Bott out of Plumbers Local 98, and IBEW Local 665 President Ray Michaels. Building trades workers, who came via car and bus from all over the Lower Peninsula, comprised the vast majority of the audience. Another demonstration was held in July at the site. Michaels called the rally "fantastic" and expressed his admiration for those willing to travel long distances to Detroit on a Saturday morning.

Bott told the crowd that as an organizer, he has never failed to see a worker fired during an organizing campaign, and that employers' typical reaction to an organizing drive is to stall so that they can coerce employees not to vote for union representation.

"Employers drag out the process for two or three years, and by that time four or five union supporters may get fired," he said. "The Employee Free Choice Act will stop that."

Michigan Building and Construction Trades Council CEO Patrick Devlin, who emceed the event, told the crowd, "The National Labor Relations Board over the last several years has massacred the dignity of workers and trampled on their rights in the workplace. The NLRB has turned decades of established labor law upside down, and abandoned their responsibility to properly administer federal labor law."

Speakers at the rally included AFL-CIO Building Trades Department President Mark Ayers, Secretary-Treasurer Sean McGarvey, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Rich Trumka, Michigan AFL-CIO President Mark Gaffney, IBEW General President Ed Hill, Operative Plasterers and Cement Masons President Patrick Finley, Iron Workers General Secretary Mike Fitzpartick (retired), Teamsters International Union Representative Kevin Moore, and U.S. Rep. John Dingell.

The Employee Free Choice Act passed the U.S. House last year, but there was not a sufficient majority in the Senate to override a filibuster. President Bush would have vetoed it, anyway.

"Republicans have long tried to undermine the National Labor Relations Act.," said Congressman John Dingell at the rally. "That's why we need the Employee Free Choice Act. If you will help us get Barack Obama elected and a Democratic majority in the House and Senate, we will do that next year."

The EFCA would allow a bargaining group to join a union through a simple "card check" process. When a union thinks it has a majority of workers ready to have a union bargain for them, cards would be signed by employees indicating whether they support the union. The law would also create stricter penalties for law-breaking employers.

Currently, federal law requires the use of a formal secret ballot election - which would be fine, except employers are allowed to drag out the process before an election is held and use that time to threaten or coerce workers, or as Bott indicated, fire workers who support the union

"EFCA promises to take what is now a nasty, bruising, and hopelessly lawyer-dominated organizing process and turn it into a simple and equitable matter of getting a majority of employees to sign union cards," said Jefferson Cowie an associate professor of history at Cornell University.

"In addition to simple 'card check' or majority verification, EFCA provides mechanisms to prevent employers from starting a war of attrition against workers once they have selected a union by sending the issue to mediation if 90 days pass without a contract. It also contains several protections for workers including treble back pay for the discriminatory discharge of union organizers."

Cowie continued: "Most advocates of labor law reform argue from a position of simple fairness, and that case is easy to make. There has been a war on organized labor in the last two decades, and private sector union density is now down to a paltry 8%. Labor law, originally designed to 'encourage' collective bargaining, has been reduced to little more than a management tool. The national labor relations machinery allows employers to be militantly, aggressively, hostile to the decisions of their employees even though three-fourths of all Americans think employers should be neutral. There are reportedly over 50 million Americans out there with an interest in joining a union but who do not have fair mechanisms available for doing so."

Unions see passage of the EFCA as part of the potential tidal wave of change expected to overcome Washington, D.C. after the Nov. 4 election, fueled by disgust over Main Street's financial bailout of Wall Street, exorbitant executive pay, stagnant worker wages and loss of workers' health care and pension/401k wealth.

The business community sees it coming, too. Management attorney Hal Coxson told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's "Labor Policy at a Crossroads" conference that when it comes to labor law, "significant, fundamental changes are disturbing, but are quite possible."


TRADE UNIONISTS gathered in a parking lot next to the NLRB headquarters in Detroit on Oct. 18 to support the Employee Free Choice Act and Barack Obama for president.