Trumka: Employee Free Choice Act Will Pass In Early 2010

AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka predicted on Monday that the Employee Free Choice Act -- the provision that would give workers easier avenues to unionize -- will be passed into law in the next few months.

"I think you will see the Employee Free Choice Act pass in the first quarter of 2010," said Trumka.

The comment, delivered at the end of an address Trumka gave before the National Press Club, is by far the most optimistic assessment of the legislation's prospects in recent memory. Before health care reform took center stage, EFCA had seemingly run up against a Republican-led filibuster in the Senate. And while it's hard to see the political landscape improving in the bill's favor, Trumka insisted that the provision will pass after the election.

"The president fully supports the Employee Free Choice Act, the Vice President fully supports the Employee Free Choice Act, a vast majority of the members of the House support the Employee Free Choice Act, a vast majority of the people of the Senate support the Employee Free Choice Act. And I think we are going to have the Employee Free Choice Act despite the determined efforts of the Republican Party..."

The AFL-CIO header did not comment on a proposal to drop one provision (majority sign-up -- in which 50 percent of workers signing cards is enough to trigger an election for the creation of a union) in favor of securing another (binding arbitration -- which allows an arbitrator to rule on a dispute in a timely manner rather then letting the disagreement go to court). But he did insist that he and other union leaders are gearing up to make another push.

"I think every workshop ought to have a union in it," said Trumka. "Because I believe better decisions are made when you sit down at the table as an equal."

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Comments

[Poiks]

03:32 PM on 01/12/2010

Can someone who supports EFCA please explain to my why keeping the secret ballots is a bad idea?

[JohnBryansFontaine]

07:13 PM on 01/12/2010

Can you tell me why the fiercely anti-Union Chamber of Commerce, Unionbuster Rick Berman and the rest of the anti-Union Network avidly supports secret ballots?

[Poiks]

07:26 PM on 01/12/2010

Why didn't you just answer my question? It was a serious question.

To TRY to answer yours with my best guess, anti-union orgs probably support the secret ballot because they maximize the chance that a union will not get in. They do that by preventing the "voters" from being pressured into doing something they don't want to do, like signing a card that someone has put down in front of you and wants you to sign.

Now back to my question, and again it is a serious one: What is wrong with the secret-ballot approach?

[Poiks]

08:17 PM on 01/12/2010

Can someone *ELSE* tell me why the secret ballot is a bad idea? It's pretty clear that this guy isn't going to get there.

[Poiks]

08:18 PM on 01/12/2010

Someone else? Is the idea of card-check that it allows organizers to preemptively unionize and prevent the company from taking steps to thwart the process?

[JohnBryansFontaine]

08:24 PM on 01/12/2010

So then the Ultimate Question Really is: why should Management ( as it stands now ), instead of the Workers ( as EFCA would make it ), decide betweenmajority sign-up or a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election process.

[CLASSWARWELOST]

03:20 PM on 01/12/2010

I would not count on this passing with corportist democrats and a corportist president who just taxed the middle class health care against the unions. This will somehow turn into another bill to give money to corporations and restrict free choice. It is the new reframing taught to Dems by the Republicans. Kinda like Health Care Reform with no reform and lots of money for corporations. Patroit Act that takes away your constitutional rights. They now have fancy names that do the exact opposite. Clear Air Act ect. This will be call Free Choice but will somehow require less choice and less rights to unionize all in the bipartisan spirit.

[BitterClinger15301]

03:11 PM on 01/12/2010

"Employee free Choice Act" - Orwell himself couldn't have came up with a better title for this piece of garbage.

[mmonarch]

03:00 PM on 01/12/2010

This guy Trumka has nerve. First he threatens the President and Congress (I guess it was extortion) that if they didn't pass the health care bill, the unions wouldn't vote for Democrats any more. So there and nyah-nyah. The Dems pass a piece of drek and the Pres. will sign it when both houses ratify it. So Trumka got his way. NOW, Trumka threatens - ooops - extorts, now that there is a health care bill on the horizon, he doesn't want his union members to have to pay for it through the Cadillac portion of the bill (ironic term, no?)

[Artamentous]

02:38 PM on 01/12/2010

Oh America.

We all enjoy the benefits that were won by unions 40 years ago, and yet many of us are to stup.id to realize what happened to America once Unions became less and less frequent.

Those who hate unions keep it up, hate them more, you will rue the day that you did. This country is losing jobs faster and faster, and the same clowns who hate unions hate all new technologies that can bring America to the forefront again. Green technology? Pfft, hug a tree. CHINA can have that technology! Biomedical research? Pfft a lot of that ruffles my morals. Building back up the infrastructure of America? Iraq and Afghanistan need it more than we do!

Well atleast we'll have bankers raping the shrinking middle class with all their BS "financial instruments" that make our lives so much better.

[Poiks]

02:31 PM on 01/12/2010

I'm seriously troubled by EFCA as I understand it. With the secret ballot gone, employees will now be subject to direct intimidation by union supporters who can put a card in front of them and lean on them to sign it. Never before has a secret ballot been seen as a problem. I don't get it.

[JohnBryansFontaine]

07:31 PM on 01/12/2010

FACT: Company intimidation is Immensely greater.

http://www.employeefreechoiceactnow.org/MythvsFact.html

[Philclock]

01:18 PM on 01/12/2010

How's it "free" for me, if I do not have a choice to a secret ballot, and am forced to sign or not sign a card for all to see?

[SOSTED]

12:58 PM on 01/12/2010

With the union mentality, you will never be part of the ownership class, just the bully class!

[CLASSWARWELOST]

03:38 PM on 01/12/2010

I am sure you have enjoyed your free ride with benefits and and weekends and living wage. The middle class wouldn't exist without Unions, which is why Rethuglicans are trying so hard to destroy them. I guess they have succeeded with people like you who don't know enough to know what side their bread is buttered. Unless of course you are part of the upper class in which case identify yourself so we can know where your really coming from and what are your self interest. Hating unions makes no sesne if you are not the upper .01% income class. Union mentality gave you the weekend , vacations, breaks and a living wage. It also did away with child labor and work hour that were too long. If there is any salvation in the coming years it will come from our unions

[HopeGrenade]

09:43 AM on 01/12/2010

To everyone who thinks the EFCA is anything harmful to the government or..."socialist".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_free_choice_act
http://www.gpn.org/data/us/us-analysis.pdfhttp://www.gpn.org/data/us/us-analysis.pdf
(page 19-20)
Also, you have no idea what you're talking about. Read books.

To everyone else:
This is the real essential piece. Health care legislation, blah blah blah, what we need is support for workers. Someone said it better in an earlier comment, but people with good, secure jobs spend more and invest more. You wanna save the economy, bail out the workers.

[AnnfromCA]

07:17 AM on 01/12/2010

Right. Like we want union organizers right now. That would kill what's left of jobs in America.

[carbolaw]

08:37 AM on 01/12/2010

So let's see you are so confident in America's ability to compete that we simply cannot compete if employees engage in collective bargaining and concerted activity. However, let's look at the CBA coverage rates and Union Density rates in the other first world countries in comparison to the US rates of 14 and 13 % - Japan 15% and 22%, New Zealand 25 and 23, UK 30 and 31, Canada 32 and 28, Germany 68 and 25, Norway 70 and 54, Spain 80 and 15, Australia 80 and 25, France 90 and 10, Sweden 90 and 79. Now if your implication is that the US should not operate as a first world country but should look to compete with third world countries through wages and lack of employee rights then perhaps you are right. However, do you really want to live in a country where working Americans make sub-poverty wages with little or no benefits. We already know that one in four American jobs even before the recession paid less than a living wage.

[mmonarch]

03:27 PM on 01/12/2010

"that we simply cannot compete if employees engage in collective bargaining and concerted activity"

I guess you're right. That's so many jobs left the country.

Unions, when first formed, served a good and noble purpose. No longer. With so many
EEOC and OEO and EPA and ERISA and OSHA, etc. the unions, for most practical purposes are obsolete and nothing more than extortionists.

[carbolaw]

08:55 AM on 01/12/2010

Also, I would just add that the last time an employee side labor law was passed in the US the unemployment rate was around 25%. However, thanks to this law - the Wagner Act, as well as other Keynesian policies and government subsidized jobs programs that worked out pretty well. In fact, the period after the passage of the Wagner Act saw the greatest growth of the middle class in the country.

[HopeGrenade]

09:36 AM on 01/12/2010

Bam. Well done.

[SOSTED]

12:28 PM on 01/12/2010

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.

Marcus Tullius Cicero [ancient Roman scholar, lawyer, statesman and orator 106BC - 43BC]

[Harry Bridges]

01:26 AM on 01/12/2010

There are two kinds of jobs: Good Jobs and Bad Jobs, and Union jobs are Good Jobs.
Good Jobs pay a living wage.
Good Jobs provide job security.
Good Jobs provide quality, inexpensive health care to American families.
With decent pay and secure jobs, working people can afford to buy homes.
With health care, children can grow up healthy and strong.
With decent pay, parents who graduated high school can save to send their children to college.
When you have a community of people who make a living wage and own their own homes, then you have enough of a tax base to create schools, hospitals, and other infrastructure.
People with Good Jobs work a fair number of hours and get holidays and vacations so that they are able to spend more time strengthening their families.
Upward mobility. Strong families. Community. Owning your own home. Healthy kids going to good schools and maybe even college. These things used to be called the American Dream.
To all you union haters out there, I say this: Get rid of all the union jobs in America!! Replace them with Bad Jobs that pay near nothing and provide no benefits. Do you honestly think that corporations will use the money they've saved for hiring? Of course not: some will go to dividends and the rest will be divvied out as bonuses, stock options and raises. And I must admit, after the job they've done conning you chumps, they'll deserve every penny of it.

[stillbarbi]

01:40 AM on 01/12/2010

I'm a fan of Harry Bridges. Well said!

[Biffmeister]

03:38 AM on 01/12/2010

Right on sister.

"An injury to one is an injury to all."

[carbolaw]

08:41 AM on 01/12/2010

Well stated and fanned. More than just counting the underemployed as those who work less hours than they want to, we should also include every job that pays less than a living wage. We should also be more aware of the number of jobs in the US that even if they pay a living wage do not offer health and retirement benefits and thus really do not pay a living wage. For a great book that covers this topic look for Ending Poverty as We Know It by William P. Quigley.

[mmonarch]

11:20 PM on 01/11/2010

The name of this act is the biggest lie, misnomer, there ever was. Who's free choice? No more secret ballots. You WILL have a union and you WILL LIKE it OR ELSE. More socialism.

[Harry Bridges]

11:26 PM on 01/11/2010

Awwww..... They're so cute when they identify with their oppressors like that.

[Charles Allen]

11:31 PM on 01/11/2010

Oh absolutely there will be a Union, unless of course the majority of people simply refuse to sign their union membership cards. Or simply vote no to the Union.

Oh wait, that means if the majority don't want a union you don't end up in a Union. Oh the horror of the democratic process.

Mmonarch really just shows the true beliefs of the Republican party, freedom to oppress is more important than freedom to organize. Freedom of capital is more important than freedom of people!

[Biffmeister]

03:53 AM on 01/12/2010

Aww come on HB, we're oppressed. Because of my (our) union job I've been forced to buy a home, have health care, buy a new car occasionally, take a little vacation every so often, easily put food on the table, have retirement income and savings, donate to those less fortunate... I don't know how I tolerate all of it.

[tokyoso]

11:45 PM on 01/11/2010

It's a secret clamour for everyone to join the "American Union" !

[Charles Allen]

01:08 AM on 01/12/2010

You're freaking kidding right?

[Ifticar2]

11:16 PM on 01/11/2010

EFCA - Employees For China Act

More unions will mean more jobs moving to China.

[Charles Allen]

01:43 AM on 01/12/2010

The lack of unions is turning the United States INTO china.

[carbolaw]

08:27 AM on 01/12/2010

If you want the US to continue to be part of the race to the bottom and to have one of the poorest working classes in the world, then you are right we should continue down this same path. However, if you believe that working Americans should share in the growth in this country and should share in their own productivity gains then there must be a change. Every study on the issue shows that the majority of working Americans would organize a union if not for fear of employer reprisal. Forming a union is a human right that belongs to employees it is an election by employees, yet we currently have a system where employers completely control the election process. Keep in mind under the current system employers are free to accept cards as a the method of certification - only employees do not have the choice. That is where you have a great chance for corruption. Under the EFCA, the employees will now have the choice, the same way as they did under the initial Wagner Act.

[Harry Bridges]

10:03 PM on 01/11/2010

The current situation is one where employees are free to choose to unionize. After they make up their minds to unionize, there follows a period in which management is allowed to threaten them with termination or plant shut downs or benefit cuts, and this period is followed by a second 'choice'. The second 'choice' is rarely the same as the first...
Imagine if we ran our governmental elections this way - where we make our choice once, and then verified that choice a few months later. You vote the mayor out of office and all of a sudden your sewer line backs up and the garbage isn't being picked up, the school bus drives right past past your kid every morning, the police don't come when you call 911 and you are pretty sure that the firemen and EMTs are under the same orders. You'd have that mayor's sign on your lawn pretty quick and you'd be insisting all your neighbor's do the same.

[carbolaw]

10:15 PM on 01/11/2010

Exactly. Further, keep in mind that under the UDHR the right to organize is recognized as a human right. Can you imagine any other human right where we would find it acceptable for an employer to force employees to listen to a speech as to why they should not be entitled to this right? The right to organize is recognized as one of the four core labor rights under the ILO. Can you imagine a captive audience speech where employees are forced to listen to the virtues of forced labor, slave labor or discrimination (the other three core labor rights)?

[Ifticar2]

11:11 PM on 01/11/2010

Imagine the Union way for voting for your Mayor.

The is not day set aside for a vote. The Mayor candidate''s thugs come visit you at home, at work or on the way. The demand that you sign a card saying that you want him to be your Mayor. If you don't sign the card, they keep coming back and back and back. Each time they come back they get a little more threatening.

When they finally have twisted enough arms to get over 50% of the cards signed, you have a new Mayor. You have a new Mayor for life. You have a new Mayor that you can not get rid. You have a Mayor that remembers the 49% that did not sign the cards.

[Harry Bridges]

11:44 PM on 01/11/2010

Like management have never intimidated labor in this country? There is a long history of labor violence in this country and in most cases it has been management doing unto labor and not the other way around. As recently as 1973, in the Harlan County War, Duke Energy hired armed goons to intimidate it's own employees, many of whose families had worked as coal miners for Duke (or it's predecessor companies) for generations. All the miners wanted was enough of a wage that they wouldn't have to live in dirt-floored houses and to maybe get indoor plumbing so their kids wouldn't have to bathe with a bucket heated on a wood stove. This was in 1973 in America!!! Oh, they wanted health-care, too. Not full healthcare, but just healthcare for the men dying of Black Lung Disease that they got working on the job.
In 2002, the West Coast Longshoreman's Union (the ILWU) went to negotiate their new contract and the shipping companies brought armed thugs along, flashing their hidden pistols to intimidate the Union men: so the union leaders opened their jackets to show THEIR guns - they'd 'negotiated' with American management in the past and knew what to expect.

[carbolaw]

09:58 PM on 01/11/2010

All of you anti-union, anti-working class posters on here can feel free to post your opinions and you are all entitled to your opinions. However, you are not entitled to your own facts and the facts are that when union density was high, the middle and working class in this country did well, we experienced the only true prolonged period of growth outside of the financial sector in this country and we saw an increase in equality. Further, if not for unions and the labor movement there would be very few if any protections for American workers. Further, as union density has declined wages have stagnated and fewer and fewer employers now offer health care and retirement benefits. These stagnating wages are a major reason for the financial collapse. There is a clear union wage and benefit effect and also a clear union threat effect that benefits even non-union employees. Finally, study after study has shown the majority of Americans would unionize if they were not afraid of employer reprisal - reprisals that are more and more common (just look at the recent study by Brofenbrenner). In most countries the right to organize is recognized as a fundamental worker right as it is under the ILO and the UDHR. Finally, in terms of competitiveness we as a country offer less protections of the right to organize than any other first world country, so I guess none of the companies from these countries can be competitive either.

[Harry Bridges]

11:06 PM on 01/11/2010

Absolutely!!!
The weaker that unions have become in this country, the greater of a conservative bogeyman they have become. If conservatives succeed in getting rid of the few union jobs left in this country, then they'll be forced to blame the decline of the middle class on gays, Mexicans or another of their scapegoat groups.
People have to rise up and realize that the rise of movement Conservatism over the last 50 years is not a reaction to the decline of the American middle-class but rather the direct Cause of that decline.

[stillbarbi]

12:45 AM on 01/12/2010

You are so right! Fanned for your knowledge of how the labor movement has improved the quality of life in our country. Union workers have paid more taxes than non-union ones, contributing more to the public welfare. Because they have good health care benefits, they are not responsible for the increases in charges for tests, procedures, and other health care not paid for by people without benefits. When some are unable to pay, we all pay more.

Most people who are against unions don't understand how union wages and benefits helped create and sustain the middle class, which is now disappearing with the decline of union membership.

Some business owners don't want to, or are unable to pay for union wages and benefits. That's understandable, but does nothing to help our economy, sustain our cities, or improve the quality of education paid for by taxes.