Anti-Employee Free Choice Campaign – An Election Non-Issue

Despite $20 million spent in nine battleground states by big business interests to attack support for the Employee Free Choice Act by Democratic Senate candidates, voters ignored the misleading attacks and overwhelmingly favored candidates who support working families.

That's the finding of a survey by Hart Research commissioned by American Rights at Work.  ARAW Chair David Bonior, in releasing the results today, noted:  "Not only did the opponents of Employee Free Choice fail to affect these races, often those candidates supporting the bill rose in the polls despite massive advertising on the issue."

The misleading ads, mainly bankrolled by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, are based on a complete lie -- the claim that Employee Free Choice would "eliminate secret ballot elections" in union campaigns.  Most of the candidates targeted by the attacks won their elections, and even in other races the issue wasn't a serious factor.  Less than one percent of citizens who voted for the anti-Employee Free Choice candidate voiced any unfavorable mention of unions or the bill itself as a factor in their voting choice, the survey found. 

In fact, voters in these battleground states "are more than twice as likely to say big corporations having too much power (50 percent) creates a bigger problem for people like them than big labor unions having too much power (23 percent)," according to Hart.

"We have only seen the beginning of the fight to restore workers' rights in this country and we can expect more sound and fury from opponents of this bill," said Bonior.  "But voters have clearly spoken.  In our current economic climate, the American public is hungry for measures to strengthen the middle class, and our new Congress should heed this call and make it a priority to pass the Employee Free Choice Act."