Skip to main content

Wanted: a president who wants government to work for U.S. workers

Date Posted: August 22 2008

By Mark Ayers
President

Building and Construction Trades Department, AFL-CIO
Commentary

MINNEAPOLIS (PAI) - In recent weeks, you may have seen ads on TV or news releases or letters to the editor in your local newspaper bashing "big labor" and the Employee Free Choice Act. Don't believe them.

The Employee Free Choice Act is federal legislation - passed by the House but stalled and killed by a GOP filibuster in the Senate - to make it easier for workers to organize unions. Both the AFL-CIO and Change to Win have united to make passing EFCA a priority for the new Congress in 2009.

In attacking the legislation, opponents distort the facts and charge that it would end secret ballot elections in union organizing drives. The charge is being raised in election races nationwide, particularly in states with close U.S. Senate races. Not true.

The foundation of modern labor law, the Wagner Act of 1935, provided a path to union recognition when a majority of workers in a workplace signed union authorization cards - simple and fair.

When labor adversaries in the Republican-run Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947 over Democratic President Harry S Truman's veto, however, employers gained the right to reject the workers' union authorization cards and to petition the National Labor Relations Board to conduct an election to determine if a workplace should become union.

But the NLRB election process bears little resemblance to elections to choose our leaders for local, state and federal government. In the run-up to NLRB elections,
employers pull out all the stops to intimidate workers into rejecting the union.

These abuses - some of them illegal, but most of them legal under Taft-Hartley - are well-documented. They include mandatory attendance at anti-union meetings, where bosses are free harangue against unions without dissent. Workers must attend or face discipline.

They also include one-on-one meetings between workers and supervisors where a boss can talk against the union, threats to close the business if the union wins the vote, and even firing workers for pro-union activity.

By contrast, the union's rights are restricted. For example, while the boss can drag in workers for anti-union harangues in company space and on company time, union campaigners must usually meet workers off the job and often after hours.

The Employee Free Choice Act would give workers, not employers, the right to
decide how to express the choice about going union: Through the card-check process OR through the NLRB election process.

Card-check, by restoring automatic recognition when the union gains election authorization cards from a majority of a worksite's members, would halt many of the employers' vicious anti-union campaigns in their tracks before the drives even start. Why? The union would already be recognized.

If passed, the Employee Free Choice Act will help expand the number of workers who enjoy union wages and union benefits like health insurance and retirement plans. If passed, the bill will help expand the number of workers who have a
voice on the job through their union.

The Employee Free Choice Act is about empowering workers. And that's why you're now hearing more about it from the opposition. That's why it's become an issue in Senate races from New Hampshire to Minnesota to Oregon, among others.

So beware of messages from groups with the nice-sounding names like "The Coalition for a Democratic Workplace" or "The Center for Union Facts." These are anti-union, business-funded front groups not at all concerned with rights of workers.

These anti-union groups aim to distort the issues involving the Employee Free Choice Act. They're using broadcast media. They're using print media. They're using "push polling" - spreading disinformation in the guise of a poll to sway, not measure, public opinion.

And they're wrapping themselves in the flag of "secret ballot elections," implying that unions want to take away your right to vote for or against unionization. That's wrong. It also diverts attention from their own abuses of the election process.

And now this right-wing smear is extending beyond the Employee Free Choice Act to attack our labor-endorsed candidates for U.S. House and U.S. Senate - because they support the legislation.

Our foes would like nothing better than to distract voters from the real issues in this campaign: Jobs, health care, the economy. To do so, they're spreading false charges and smearing unions, the EFCA, and labor's endorsed candidates.

Don't let them get away with it. And beware of what they're doing.