Employee Free Choice Act: Vital Workers' Rights Bill is Key To Saving America's Middle Class

Fifty years ago, America's labor unions and the labor laws they'd fought for were building a middle class that would make the United States the most powerful and most envied country in the world.

Today, millions of the children and grandchildren of those original middle-class families are struggling to make ends meet. They are working harder for smaller paychecks, adjusted for inflation. Their health care costs — even if they have insurance — are skyrocketing. They don't have nearly enough saved for retirement and those lucky enough to still have pension plans worry that their company will be the next to abandon them. They fret about college tuition and caring for aging parents.

Most of them — 57 million Americans, according to a national poll conducted for the AFL-CIO — wish they could join a union and bargain contracts that would improve their wages, health care, retirement security, time off and other benefits. Some of them have attempted to organize and been crushed by their bosses' union-busting tactics, from threats to firings. Some are afraid even to try.

To those tens of millions of American workers, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told a CWA audience in March, "we say, 'Help is on the way.'"

"Help" is the Employee Free Choice Act, heralded by union leaders as the most important piece of workers' rights legislation since the National Labor Relations Act, or Wagner Act, of 1935 established the right to form unions and bargain collectively.

The bill would allow employees at a jobsite to form a union when a majority signs cards seeking representation, preventing the pre-election stalling tactics, captive-audience meetings, threats, harassment and intimidation that employers now engage in with impunity.

Once the union is established, the Employee Free Choice Act calls for first contract arbitration if an agreement can't be reached within 90 days — again, ending the common tactic of employers dragging their feet for months and even years to prevent collective bargaining.

Under the leadership of Pelosi and Rep. George Miller, a fellow California Democrat who is chair of the House Education and Labor Committee, a bipartisan majority in the U.S. House passed the Employee Free Choice Act on March 1 during the first 100 days of floor business under Democratic control. Thirteen Republicans, including co-sponsor Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), joined in the historic 241-185 victory.     

"We all know that workers in the U.S. are among the most productive workers in the world. Yet for far too long, they have not been reaping the benefits of their hard work," Miller said. "There are a lot of explanations for the growing inequality, but perhaps the most significant explanation is that workers' rights to join together and bargain for better wages, benefits and working conditions have been serverly undermined.

CWA President Larry Cohen, noting the vast difference between the United States and other countries in attitudes toward workers and unions, said the new Congress "has taken the strongest stand in generations for American workers, declaring that collective bargaining is as critical in our democracy as it is in every other democracy around the world."

As hard as union activists worked to get the bill through the U.S. House — meeting with lawmakers, writing letters, holding rallies and calling press conferences — Cohen said the hardest job still lies ahead in getting the bill through the Senate.

Working with the AFL-CIO and other unions, CWA is taking the lead in lobbying for the bill, S. 1041.

Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), chair of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, is determined to get the bill to the Senate floor, but once there it faces a possible Republican filibuster. If it does pass, President Bush has pledged to veto it.

Those scenarios mean that it will take a worker-friendly Congress and a new pro-worker president elected in November 2008 to make the Employee Free Choice Act a reality.

"We will be paying very close attention to the presidential candidates' track records and statements about our four major goals — jobs, health care, bargaining rights and retirement security," Cohen said. "As we head into an election year with an economy that is leaving working families behind and a White House that's been more hostile to workers' rights than ever in our lifetimes, this bill will be the single most important issue for unions and all American workers.