Employee Free Choice Act—NOW! The Facts about the Act

The Employee Free Choice Act will take away workers' right to a secret ballot election.

The Employee Free Choice Act protects the right to a secret ballot union recognition election. Any group of workers can still opt for a secret ballot election under the Employee Free Choice Act using the same process currently in the law.

The Employee Free Choice Act provides workers the option of forming a union by majority sign up (50% plus one) — currently allowed under federal law but almost never honored by employers who demand an election in   order to gain months in which to use fear tactics, threats, even firings to persuade workers to vote against having a union.

Employee Free Choice would require employers to recognize majority sign up as they do in every other democracy.

Under Employee Free Choice, EMPLOYERS would lose their power to demand an election. Workers would not lose anything. Workers would gain the right to require employers to recognize majority sign up.

The Employee Free Choice isn't needed; federal and state laws already protect workers' rights.

In the early decades of the 1935 National Labor Relations Board Act, the law worked the way it was intended. Workers nationwide organized unions and the result was America's middle class, making the United States the strongest and most economically prosperous nation in the world.

Employers routinely recognized majority sign up. It was only in the 1960s that employers typically began refusing to honor majority sign up and contesting elections. Demanding an election became a tactic to obtain time to intimidate and persuade workers through fear tactics to vote against a union. Today even if workers are found to have been unfairly fired because of efforts to form a union, just getting their case heard can take years.

It's employers, not unions, that have the coercive power to intimidate, fire and demote workers or threaten to close up shop. The fact is most workers want a union. Polls routinely show that about 60 percent of workers who aren't unionized would join a union if they had the chance.

How far will employers go to stop workers from having that opportunity? A Cornell University study of union election campaigns found that:

• In 25 percent of campaigns, employers illegally fire at least one worker.
• In 51 percent, employers threaten to close plants and offices if the union wins.
• In 78 percent, employers force workers to attend intimidating one-on-one meetings with supervisors to discuss why unions are a bad idea.

Arbitration, in the event that first contract talks are stalled for 120 days, gives unions no incentive to bargain.

Arbitration cuts both ways: Unions have as much to lose as employers do, and have every bit as much incentive to work hard at the bargaining table to reach a contract agreement. 

But the possibility of arbitration is a vital provision in the Employee Free Choice Act because so many employers refuse to bargain in good faith to reach a first contract agreement. According to the Cornell University research cited above, even when workers overcome all the obstacles and win a union election, 33 percent of the time employers refuse to agree to a first contract.