American workers need Employee Free Choice Act
This Labor Day, while the average price of gas hovers at $4 a gallon, the average middle class American family is finding it hard to get to work, never mind travel for vacation. This is belt tightening like we haven’t seen it since 1975.We’re all doing the best we can, but clipping coupons just isn’t enough. Most of us are falling behind. In contrast, the average American CEO makes $6,153 an hour, according to Forbes.
Health care costs are soaring, retirement security is disappearing, and good jobs are being replaced with McJobs. It doesn’t have to be this way. It’s time for our country to embrace economic policies that benefit workers as well as CEOs and corporations. We need an economy that works for all.
The Employee Free Choice Act would level the playing field between corporations and employees, and give workers the freedom to form unions to improve their lives. In the big picture, when more workers are free to form unions, that creates a powerful counterbalance to corporate interests in our society and economy. And on a personal level, when workers have a union, they are simply able to do better for themselves and their families.
Government statistics show that union members make 30 percent more than workers who don’t have a union. Union members are 59 percent more likely to have health benefits through their employer and much more likely to have a pension.
In Pennsylvania, union members make $8,555 more than workers who don’t have a union, according the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Unions are still the best support our nation has for our dwindling middle class. But what about the folks who don’t have a union?
According to independent polling, more than half of U.S. workers – nearly 60 million – say they would join a union right now if they could. But in reality, too few will get the chance.
Every day, corporations deny employees the freedom to decide for themselves whether to form unions to bargain for a better life. They routinely intimidate, harass, coerce and even fire people who try to organize unions, and our nation’s labor laws are helpless to stop them.
When workers want to form unions, most must go through a company-dominated election process that is completely unlike our regular democratic elections. A study from Cornell University shows that a quarter of companies fire workers in private-sector union organizing campaigns, often in the days leading up to the election. Three-quarters of companies force workers into one-on-one meetings against the union with their direct supervisors, and employees often aren’t allowed to speak. Meanwhile, union representatives aren’t even allowed on the premises to talk to employees.
It’s time change the rules and restore fairness.
The Employee Free Choice Act would remove barriers workers face when forming unions by stiffening penalties for companies that break the law and guaranteeing workers a first contract. It would also enable workers to form a union when a majority of workers sign up. That’s important because joining a union should be just as easy as joining any other group, like a church, a volunteer organization, or even a political party.
If workers still want to have an election, they can have one. But the legislation would give workers, not their companies, the choice on how to form a union.
Passing the Employee Free Choice Act would have a tremendous impact on revitalizing Pennsylvania. Based on data from the National Compensation Survey, if we added just 10 percent more union members in Pennsylvania, over 291,000 more workers and their families would be participating in employers’ health insurance plans … and over 256,000 would be participating in a pension plan with their employer.
The Employee Free Choice Act has majority support in the House and Senate, though President Bush has threatened to veto it, as has Sen. John McCain. Sen. Barack Obama has been clear that he supports this key legislation, and will sign it if given the chance.
All people who want to have a union to bargain for better wages and benefits deserve a fair chance to form one – and the right to decide for themselves how they want to go about it.
Working men and women need a fighting chance in today’s economy. It’s up to our nation’s leaders to give them that chance.
Richard Trumka, a native of Nemacolin, Pa., is the secretary-treasurer of the 10-million member national AFL-CIO. Mr. Trumka served three terms as president of the United Mine Workers of America before being elected to his position with the AFL-CIO.