Partisan battle lines drawn over Employee Free Choice
WASHINGTON, D.C. (PAI) —
Partisan battle lines were sharply drawn
Feb. 8 in the first congressional hearing
on the labor-backed Employee Free
Choice Act.
Led by House Health, Employment,
Labor and Pensions Subcommittee
Chairman Rob Andrews (D-N.J.), De-
mocrats lined up solidly behind EFCA,
which would help level the playing
field for working people by fixing a
badly broken system in which workers
are routinely denied their freedom to
form or join a union.
EFCA, House Resolution (HR) 800
was introduced Feb. 7 following a press
conference that included officials from
the AFL-CIO and Change to Win labor
federations, congressional leaders, civil
rights activists and workers.
The bill has a majority 232 co-spon-
sors in the House, including Oregon
Democrats Earl Blumenauer, David
Wu, Darlene Hooley and Peter De-
Fazio, and Washington Democrats
Brian Baird, Jay Inslee, Rick Larsen,
Norm Dicks, Jim McDermott and
Adam Smith. Seven Republicans also
support the bill.
But the legislation faces an uphill
battle in the the Senate, and will cer-
tainly be vetoed by President George W.
Bush if it gets that far. It is unlikely the
Senate will garner enough votes to
override a presidential veto.
Union officals believe the Employee
Free Choice Act will be a major topic
in the 2008 presidential election.
At the first committee hearing, Re-
publicans, led by Rep. John Kline (R-
Minn.), held to the line pushed by the
U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the
National Right to Work Committee.
The panel’s Republicans declared the
only way to put unions in workplaces is
by National Labor Relations Board-run
Increasing majority support unions
A December 2006 survey by Peter D. Hart Research Associates shows that
the public support of unions is at a 25-year high — 65 percent approve of
unions while only 25 percent disapprove. Some 57 percent of all prime-age
workers — roughly 60 million in all — say they would join a union today if
given the chance.
Yet, according to a recent Department of Labor report, the overall union-
ization rate in the U.S. continues to decline. Just 12 percent of wage and salary
workers were union members in 2006, down from 12.5 percent in 2005 and
down from more than 20 percent in 1980.
According to the Hart poll, 69 percent said they were supportive of the Em-
ployee Free Choice Act as a means to help workers level the playing field.
Only 23 percent of Americans expect the next generation’s standard of living
to be better than today’s.
secret ballot elections.
Proponents of the bill, however,
maintain that under the current process
for joining a union, employers routinely
harass, intimidate and even fire workers
for trying — and current labor law
doesn’t have the teeth to stop them.
Gordon Lafer, a professor at the La-
bor Education and Research Center at
the University of Oregon, pointed to
federal election laws, and how employ-
ers cannot coerce employees over their
vote. Those same economic protections
applied to voters do not apply to work-
ers in union elections.
Lafer said management is free to ex-
press its views on the union at any time,
supervisors are urged to hold one-on-
one meetings with employees, making
their pro-management views known,
but at the same time, pro-union sup-
porters are banned from discussing the
union or posting pro-union literature
anywhere in the workplace.
He pointed out how employers can
force employees to attend mass meet-
ings where pro-union employees are
told that if they speak they can be fired
on the spot.
“If during the 2004 election, the
Bush Administration could have forced
every voter in America to watch the
Swiftboat Veterans for Truth movie,
with no opportunity for response from
the other side — or if the Democrats
could have forced everyone to watch
Farenheit 9/11 — they might well have
seized the opportunity — but no one
would have called it democracy,” Lafer
said.
HR 800 would outlaw mandatory
closed-door meetings and impose stiff
penalties on companies that coerce or
intimidate employees with threats of
closure or firings. It also establishes a
third-party mediation process when
employers and employees can’t agree
on a first contract. And it enables em-
ployees to form unions when a majority
express their decision to join the union
by signing authorization cards.
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NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
FEBRUARY 16, 2007
