Mobilizing for the Employee Free Choice Act

On February 4, 2009, 4,000 workers rallied on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC and began to deliver the cards, petitions and signatures of one and a half million Americans demanding the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act.

On a bitterly cold day, led by the AFL-CIO and the United Steelworkers and its President Leo Gerard, workers came to tell the Congress what hell corporations put us through when we try to organize unions, how workers are fired, intimidated and retaliated against when they try to get a voice at work, and that our economy cannot be fixed until we pass the Employee Free Choice Act and workers can freely form unions and bargain for better lives for their families, bargain for a way out of poverty and for a stronger, deeper, larger middle class.

It will take a huge demand, a million and a half voices, and the largest grassroots legislative mobilization ever, to win the Employee Free Choice Act and restore balance to an economy ruined by deregulation, obscene greed, a fetish for disastrous free market economics, and 30 years of failed, now completely discredited trickle down economics.

All the forces of our failed economics and engineers of this recession want to save the status quo and keep things just as they are. The Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers and Grover Norquist and John McCain and all of corrupt corporate America will do anything to stop the Employee Free Choice Act, while they couldn't move fast enough to shovel $700 billion to bail out the entire financial industry.

Our government is in the process of releasing the second $350 billion of the $700 billion the Congress approved a couple of months ago to bail out the banks and financial industry.

The Republicans in Congress, for the most part, classically top-down worship the failed free-market fashion and want to save the economy by saving those at the top at the expense of everyone else. The $700 billion bailout for the banks and the rest of the financial industry couldn't be allocated fast enough without any study or oversight or accountability. Now those same Republicans howl about anything in President Obama's stimulus plan other than more and more tax cuts while they promise to stop the Employee Free Choice Act, binding working families into poverty, starving and squeezing the middle class.

Economists across the ideological spectrum know that the fundamental crisis in our economy is a lack of demand, the loss of buying and consuming power resulting from 30 years of wage stagnation and decline.

Economic thinkers from Paul Krugman to Robert Reich to Jared Bernstein to Dean Baker and many others have all said that the Employee Free Choice Act is an effective and important way to restore collective bargaining and wage growth stimulating demand and consumption.

But the radical rightwing, their Republican Members of Congress, and corrupt corporate power will all continue to threaten supporters of the Employee Free Choice Act, lie about its provisions, spend hundreds of millions of dollars on TV ads to obfuscate or obliterate the truth about the legislation and its role in reviving our economy.

That is why the 4,000 worker rally at the Capitol and the delivery of one and a half million cards and signatures only presage the latest grassroots legislative campaign in history that organized labor and its allies will mount in the next few months.

The broad coalition for a more just America is lining up behind the legislation and mobilizing its constituencies from the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council to community organizations like ACORN to a broad spectrum of people of faith to the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and the NAACP and hundreds more.

The labor movement led by the AFL-CIO is pivoting from the Million Worker Demand to grassroots mobilization across America determined to generate hundreds of thousands of handwritten letters, phone calls and face-to-face meetings with Members of Congress.

President Obama and change won the election. Change is what we will get.

Comments

[mickeyobama]

Mr Acuff is categorically correct: it is businesses who are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to obfuscate and manipulate the truth about the Employee Free Choice Act(EFCA). EFCA reconnects to the Wagner Acts'(National labor Relations Act of 1935) original intent and plan-employers must not interfere with worker's right to organize. Any form of employer interference with a union organizing campaign is inherently coercive given the economic dependence that defines the relationship.

Employers complain that EFCA would obviate the sacred "secret ballot election" depriving the worker of his/her right to vote privately. But the truth is that employers could not care less about the employee's secret ballot. It does not take a towering intellect to see the plain and simple truth:employer's are attempting to exploit the aforementioned secret ballot argument for their own expedient ends:they want to make it as difficult as possible for worker's to choose a union so that employers will keep power on their side. Most empoyers just do not want unions because then employers would have to negotiate not dictate the terms and conditons of the work place with the employees.

[JohnBryansFontaine]

"Stop Big Labor Bailout" ad was supplied by the virulently anti-Union

Workforce Fairness Institute. This is just another example of the campaign of disinformation against EFCA:

http://walmartwatch.com/blog/archives/group_to_keep_an_eye_on_workforce_fairness_institute/efca/against_list.cfm

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/09/us/09labor.html?_r=1&ref=us

[dreamsmasher]

What happens when the unions cross the line?
Who is going to hold the unions accountable for their harrassment and intimidation of workers?
Remember Overnite Trucking? Overnite Trucking definitely had it's faults and was fined for it's offenses, however the Teamsters did everything they could to harass and intimidate Overnite because in the heat of a teamster strike against the trucking industry namely Overnites rivals, Overnite kept on trucking.
The Teamsters intimidated and threatened not only Overnite but the employees of Overnite just the same, the Teamsters violated every rule that the Employee Free Choice Act holds and yet not one single Democrat will stand up to this madness because afterall they are cowering to their base. The Democrats again are pushing a bill that is absolutely WRONG! this bill can be a good bill if it includes punishing the unions for their acts of harrassment and intimidation.
I am a proud member of a union but I am not ignorant enough to think that unions are incapable of intimidation or harrassment, I have personally been on the receiving end of this.
Make it fair, it should not benefit the union only, this bill should hold both parties accountable equally.
Have YOU ever been INTIMIDATED TO join a union? I have! Just for clarification, I was not intimidated by the union I am currently a member of.

[EFCANOW]

Employee Free Choice Now . Org
Educating The World on The EFCA.

Myth vs. Reality: The REALITY is the Employee Free Choice Act Helps American Workers and their Families.

Despite the need for reform, critics of EFCA continue to misinform the public about the bill and hide the serious shortcomings of current labor law. Democrats are committed to setting the record straight and passing this important legislation on behalf of American workers and their families.

MYTH: EFCA will prevent the use of secret-ballot elections.

REALITY: EFCA does not strip workers of their right to choose a secret-ballot election to decide whether to select -- or not to select -- a union representative. EFCA simply gives workers the additional option of selecting a union representative by majority sign-up.


For More Information on EFCA please visit our website and blog

http://www.employeefreechoiceactnow.org

http://efcanow.blogspot.com/

http://www.freechoiceactnow.org

http://www.LaborUnionResources.Org

[dreamsmasher]

I will ask you point blank: Do you agree that this bill should include punishment for unoins/union members that harrass, intimidate and threaten employees/brother union members? And how severe should the punishment be?
And this includes strike talks and actual strikes.
I personally have been threatened to have my tires slashed and my house burned to the ground if I did not agree to strike, and this was by my fellow union members, the strike never happened but I was also told that if the strike happened and I crossed that line my vehicle would be destroyed and I would be leaving in an ambulance, the company has never threatened me or intimidated me or harrassed me in any way shape or form the union is the side that was always the problem.