Fighting Back: Employee Fee Choice Act: Protecting Collective Bargaining a Top Priority

The Employee Free Choice Act, the union movement's most promising weapon against corporate greed and the country's badly broken system of labor laws, will be high on the agenda in 2007, Democratic leaders pledge.

Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), one of the act's original sponsors and the incoming chair of the House Education and Labor Committee, told hundreds of cheering union activists at a Capitol Hill rally Dec. 8 that he will hold hearings early in the year and push for the bill's passage in the House by May.

"We are going to ease the squeeze on the middle class and one of the most important ways to do that is by restoring the freedom of workers to have a voice at work," Miller said. "When workers have the opportunity to join a union, it makes a world of difference for them and their families."

The Employee Free Choice Act, first introduced in 2003, had 214 co-sponsors in the House in 2006 — including 14 Republicans, and 45 in the Senate, including one Republican. The bill must be resubmitted in the new Congress.

The bill would allow workers to join a union when more than 50 percent of them sign cards. Under current law, some employers routinely control the election process through stalling and intimidation tactics, including firing union supporters. Anti-union law firms are so confident that they can help employers evade what's left of the country's badly broken laws protecting workers' rights that some offer clients a money-back guarantee if employees win a union election.

The bill further calls for mediation if a first contract isn't negotiated within 90 days and, if necessary, binding arbitration. Currently, even when workers clear all the hurdles to form a union, many employers deny them bargaining rights by refusing to negotiate a contract. The bill would also increase penalties for employers who discriminate against or fire workers for union organizing.

"American workers have the worst deal they've had in a hundred years while their bosses have the best deal ever," CWA President Larry Cohen said. "We're fighting back. We're going to change this."

Speaking to the AFL-CIO Organizing Summit in December, Cohen noted that in Sweden, 90 percent of workers have bargaining rights; in Germany, 55 percent; in England, 40 percent. "In the United States, it's 7.8 percent, and that's a disgrace," he said.

Already, corporate opponents are using scare tactics, absurdly claiming that unions are trying to subvert democracy by ending the practice of secret-ballot elections. In private communications with employers, Cohen said management-side labor law firms are even more aggressive, calling for a "war" on unions. One anti-union flyer he showed at the summit even pictured an armed gunman.

But tactics and rhetoric that worked in the Republican-led Congress won't fly now, new leaders say. In addition to Miller, incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has pledged to pass the Employee Free Choice Act in the first half of 2007 and Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), the new chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, is also promising action.

"That's why Rep. Miller and I are determined to protect every employee's right to join a union and stop once and for all this continuing epidemic of bullying and intimidation," Kennedy said.