Elana Levin
The Rebuilding the Middle Class Act AKA Employee Free Choice: UPDATE!
Blog Post About DMI's TheMiddleClass.org
As DMI’s Amy Traub wrote The Employee Free Choice Act “could also be called the Rebuilding the American Middle Class Act.”
The bill would make it easier for employees to decide if they want to join a union and have that union recognized by their employer. There were a lot of myths being pushed around by opponents of workers rights. They say that the current system of National Labor Review Board [NLRB} run “elections” is just fine (“coercions” may be a more appropriate name for the NLRB system than actual “elections”). In reality, one in five union activists can expect to be fired during an organizing campaign according to a study by The Center for Economic and Policy Research. The tactics that employers deploy to scare their employees out of organizing are truly harrowing. “Ninety-two percent of private-sector employers, when faced with employees who want to join together in a union, force employees to attend closed-door meetings to hear anti-union propaganda”
For a sample of what it feels like to be intimidated by an employer check out the AFLCIO’s video
EFCA wasn’t proposing anything radical or crazy. As the Chair of the House Education and Labor Committee George Miller said “We're here today to talk about whether or not workers will simply have the choice to exercise a right that has been in the law for 70 years ... A right that is part of the National Labor Relations Act but is revoked by employers arbitrarily with out reason and without purpose. "
Though the legislation passed Congress, President Bush performed the bidding of his corporate backers and vetoed the Employee Free Choice Act—legislation that would have helped the 42 million American workers who said they would like to join a union if they could.
Elana Levin: Author Bio | Other Posts
Posted at 6:50 AM, Oct 30, 2007 in
Civil Rights | Economic Opportunity | Middle-class squeeze | TheMiddleClass.org
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