Allies Spotlight Support for Employee Free Choice

A panel of leaders representing a range of diverse groups told the media Tuesday that America needs the Employee Free Choice Act.

Wade Henderson, director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, tells reporters at the National Press Club this week that his organization and many other human rights, religious and consumer groups support the Employee Free Choice Act.

"There is a fundamental imbalance in the power relationship between those who seek to organize and those who seek to thwart it," said Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, outlining the broad coalition of human rights, religious and environmental groups joining with unions to back the workers' rights bill.

Labor's allies understand what it means to be the underdog, he said, "and so we understand the importance of the Employee Free Choice Act. And we know that only in coalition do you have the power to advance a bill that is being distorted in the press."

The Employee Free Choice Act is backed by a huge bipartisan majority in the House, a majority of U.S. senators and President-elect Barack Obama. A new poll by Hart Research shows that 78 percent of Americans favor legislation that will make it easier for workers to organize and bargain contracts. Only 17 percent of respondents were opposed.

For more on employee free choice, go to www.freechoiceact.org.

"The American people get it," said American Rights at Work Executive Director Mary Beth Maxwell. "They know the current system is not working and it's time to restore some balance."

"The state of America's workers is abysmal," said ARAW Chair and former Congressman David Bonior. "While the middle class is shrinking, we've watched as over the last 20 years the top 10 percent took 90 percent of the income gains in this country. In fact, the top 1 percent took roughly 60 percent of these income gains," he said.

To bridge this gap in income equality, "we must give people a chance to bargain collectively with their employers. Following the Second World War, we saw the three most profitable decades for working people, because 35 percent of America's workers belonged to a labor union," he added.

Economist Dean Baker said the Employee Free Choice Act is a key part of rebuilding the nation's devastated economy. "We are in the worst downturn since the Great Depression," he said. "And that can be traced to the failure of workers' wages to keep pace with productivity gains over the last three decades."

Tuesday's press conference included a worker from a Price Right supermarket in Rhode Island, who joined the news conference after his night shift stocking shelves. Joe Sorrentino and coworkers have been trying to organize a union in spite of the company's threats to shut down the store if they are successful.

If we don't push this through, "we're just going to see another generation of low-paying jobs, borderline poverty, and I feel there won't be a middle class in America anymore," he said.