March 1, 2009 - 12:41 pm
News Feed: New Hampshire

"A mortal threat to American freedom..."

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As we have been warning for some time here on the 'Grok, this US Senate session will include a fight over what we have long refered to as the "deceptively named" Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) or, as it is more commonly known-- "card check." Noted in several prior posts and discussed on our Saturday radio program, this legislation eliminates the secret ballot presently available to workers when it comes to the question of unionization. As you might suspect, Democrats are mostly in favor of its passage, given their long-time relationship with labor unions in general, and it has been up to the Republicans to

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FCA


The Employee Free Choice Act
Facts and fictions.

Many groups around the country are ramping up to fight the Free Choice Act (FCA). Just because they want to stop citizens for having the right to be represented by unions.
These groups which are too numerous to name are telling outright lies and purposely miss-construing the FCA to confuse and divide anybody that may want to get accurate information. Furthermore they will not provide information on studies and survey done by groups from people that have recently been involved in organizing campaigns both successful and unsuccessful for the union or company depending on how you look at the situation.

The numbers speak for themselves these groups are fronts for big cooperation’s and business groups that want to destroy Unions. Basically these groups do not want individual citizens having the right to decide for themselves on wither to join a union or not.
And they have no problems lying, telling half truths, or confusing the issue.

So if you truly care to let individuals have the ability to have access to information to make an informed decision so they can make choices they feel are correct for them. The following pages have facts figures and actual language from the NLRA of 1935 till today.

Democracy is American, Unions are Democratic organizations. Have you ever been part of a company that did things in a Democrat method?

America’s workers want to form unions. Research shows nearly 60 million would form a union tomorrow if given the chance.
Too few ever get that chance because employers routinely block their efforts to form unions—and our current legal system is too broken to stop them. As many as one-quarter of employers illegally fire workers who try to form unions.
The Employee Free Choice Act would give workers a fair chance to form unions to improve their lives by:
Allowing them to form unions by signing cards authorizing union representation.
• Providing mediation and arbitration for first-contract disputes (PDF).
• Establishing stronger penalties for violation of employee rights when workers seek to form a union and during first-contract negotiations.
In the 110th Congress, the Employee Free Choice Act had widespread support.
More than three-quarters of Americans—77 percent—support strong laws that give employees the freedom to make their own choice about whether to have a union in their workplace without interference from management (PDF).
Allowing working people to choose for themselves whether to have a union is the key step toward rebuilding America’s middle class. Union membership brings better wages and benefits and a real voice on the job (PDF). It’s no accident that the 25-year decline in workers’ wages in our country has paralleled a 25-year slide in the size of the America’s unions.
The Employee Free Choice Act would put democracy back into the workplace. Majority sign-up would ensure the decision whether to form a union was made by majority choice, not by the employer unilaterally.
Workers can still vote under the Employee Free Choice Act. At any time, if 30 percent of the workers want an election, they can have one. And once they have a union, workers also vote to elect their union representatives.
The Employee Free Choice Act has the support of hundreds of respected organizations and individuals—major religious denominations, academics and civil and human rights groups and others.
The AFL-CIO union movement is working in many ways to restore good jobs, health care and retirement security—but passing the Employee Free Choice Act is our top priority because we cannot create balance for working people or rebuild the middle class unless workers genuinely have the freedom to form unions for a better life.
The System for Forming Unions is Broken
Today, CEOs get contracts that protect their wages and benefits. But some deny their employees the same opportunity. Although U.S. and international laws are supposed to protect workers' freedom to belong to unions, employers routinely harass, intimidate, coerce and even fire workers struggling to gain a union so they can bargain for better lives. And U.S. labor law is powerless to stop them. Employees are on an uneven playing field from the first moment they begin exploring whether they want to form a union, and the will of the majority often is crushed by brutal management tactics.
Cornell University scholar Kate Bronfenbrenner studied hundreds of organizing campaigns and found that:
• Ninety-two percent of private-sector employers, when faced with employees who want to join together in a union, force employees to attend closed-door meetings to hear anti-union propaganda; 80 percent require supervisors to attend training sessions on attacking unions; and 78 percent require that supervisors deliver anti-union messages to workers they oversee.
• Seventy-five percent hire outside consultants to run anti-union campaigns, often based on mass psychology and distorting the law.
• Half of employers threaten to shut down partially or totally if employees join together in a union.
• In 25 percent of organizing campaigns, private-sector employers illegally fire workers because they want to form a union.
• Even after workers successfully form a union, in one-third of the instances, employers do not negotiate a contract.

Learn More
• Get the facts in a one-page flier: Employer Interference—by the Numbers.
• Report: Impact of Republican-Appointed Judges: The Courts of Appeals’ Mistreatment of Union and Worker Success Before the NLRB.
• Read the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights report on the Employee Free Choice Act (PDF).
• Why majority sign-up? What's wrong with "secret ballot elections"?
• Out Front with John Sweeney: Management-Controlled Balloting.
• AFL-CIO Now blog: Here’s What NLRB 'Elections' Really Mean.
• Firedoglake weblog: These Elections Aren’t Democratic.
• Elections—NLRB Style.
• Read Human Rights and Workers' Rights in the United States (2005) by Lance Compa, author of the 2000 Human Rights Watch (HRW) report.
• Learn more about Voice@Work, the campaign to restore all workers’ freedom to form unions.
• See what you can do if you’re punished for supporting a union.
• Download the AFL-CIO issue brief, The Silent War: The Assault on Workers’ Freedom to Choose a Union and Bargain Collectively in the United States.
• Read a summary or download the full HRW report, Unfair Advantage: Workers’ Freedom of Association in the United States Under International Human Rights Standards.
American Rights at Work
Advocacy group American Rights at Work investigates workers' rights abuses, promotes public policy that protects workers' rights to form unions and bargain collectively and sponsors reports on workers' rights issues.
• The Anti-Union Network: Profiles of Unionbusters.
• Workers' Rights Watch: Eye on the NLRB.
• Read a new American Rights at Work study, Secret Ballots Aren't Enough (PDF).
• Read Undermining the Right to Organize: Employer Behavior During Union Representation Campaigns, a disturbing study of employer interference (PDF).
• Read Labor Day List: Partnerships that Work (2006), a report on successful partnerships between employers and their employees’ unions.
• Fact Sheet

• Why do we need new federal legislation, the Employee Free Choice Act?
• America’s working people are struggling to make ends meet, and our middle class is disappearing. The best opportunity working men and women have to get ahead is by uniting with co-workers to bargain with their employers for better wages and benefits.
• But the current labor law system is broken. Corporations routinely intimidate, harass, coerce and even fire people who try to organize unions—and today’s labor law is powerless to stop them. Every day, employers deny working people the freedom to make their own choice about whether to have a union:
• • Employees are fired in one-quarter of private-sector union organizing campaigns;
• • 78 percent of private employers require supervisors to deliver anti-union messages to the workers whose jobs and pay they control;
• • And even after workers successfully form a union, one-third of the time they are not able to get a contract.

• What does the Employee Free Choice Act do?
• It does three things to level the playing field for employees and employers:
• 1. Strengthens penalties for companies that illegally coerce or intimidate employees in an effort to prevent them from forming a union;
• 2. Brings in a neutral third party to settle a contract when a company and a newly certified union cannot agree on a contract after three months;
• 3. Establishes majority sign-up, meaning that if a majority of the employees sign union authorization cards, validated by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), a company must recognize the union.

• What’s wrong with the current law?
• The National Labor Relations Act states: “Employees shall have to the right to self organization to form, join, or assist labor organizations…” It was designed to protect employee choice on whether to form unions, but it has been turned upside down.
• The current system is not like any democratic election held anywhere else in our society. Employers have turned the NLRB election process into management-controlled balloting—the employer has all the power, controls the information workers can receive and routinely poisons the process by intimidating, harassing, coercing and even firing people who try to organize unions. On top of that, the law’s penal¬ties are so insignificant that many companies treat them as just another cost of doing business. By the time employees vote in an NLRB election, if they can get to that point, a free and fair choice isn’t an option. Even in the voting location, workers do not have a free choice after being browbeaten by supervisors to oppose the union or being told they may lose their jobs and livelihoods if they vote for the union.

• What is majority sign-up, and how does it work?
• When a majority of employees votes to form a union by signing authorization cards, and those authori¬zation cards are validated by the federal government, the employer will be legally required to recognize and bargain with the workers’ union.
• Majority sign-up is not a new approach. For years, some responsible employers such as Cingular Wireless have taken a position of allowing employees to choose, by majority decision, whether to have a union. Those companies have found that majority sign-up is an effective way to allow workers the freedom to make their own decision—and it results in less hostility and polarization in the workplace than the failed NLRB process.

• Does the Employee Free Choice Act take away so-called secret ballot elections?
• No. If one-third of workers want to have an NLRB election at their workplace, they can still ask the federal government to hold an election. The Employee Free Choice Act simply gives them another option—majority sign-up.
• “Elections” may sound like the most democratic approach, but the NLRB process is nothing like any democratic elections in our society—presidential elections, for example—because one side has all the power. The employer controls the voters’ paychecks and livelihood, has unlimited access to speak against the union in the workplace while restricting pro-union speech and has the freedom to intimidate and coerce the voters.

• Does the Employee Free Choice Act silence employers or require that they remain neutral about the union?
• No. Employers are still free to express their opinion about the union as long as they do not threaten or intimidate workers.

• Will employees be pressured into signing union authorization cards?
• No. In fact, academic studies show that workers who organize under majority sign-up feel less pressure from co-workers to support the union than workers who organize under the NLRB election process. Workers who vote by majority sign-up also report far less pressure or coercion from management to oppose the union than workers who go through NLRB elections
• In addition, it is illegal for anyone to coerce employees to sign a union authorization card. Any person who breaks the law will be subject to penalties under the Employee Free Choice Act.

Opponents of giving workers the freedom to choose a union through a simple process that recognizes the will of the majority allege it will open workers to coercion by unions.
But majority sign-up is not new or untested. It has been legal since the National Labor Relations Act was enacted in 1935, and millions of workers have formed unions by signing union authorization cards under a majority sign-up procedure. So what does the record show?

 A study by the HR Policy Association identified 113 cases since the inception of the National Labor Relations Act as involving fraud and coercion in connection with card collection; upon review, however, only 42 of those cases actually found misconduct in the signing of union authorization cards – since 1935. That’s less than one case every two years.

 In fact, it is employers that hold the power over workers – the power to hire and fire and determine wages and promotions. That’s the power that can lead to coercion. And it is corporations that have the record of intimidating workers.

 In 2007 alone, there were 29,559 instances of illegal firings and other employer discrimination against workers for exercising their federally protected labor law rights, according to the National Labor Relations Board.
 According to annual reports from the NLRB, the number of employer violations in 2006 was 26,824; in 2005, it was 31,358; in 2004, it was 30,784; and in 2003, it was 23,144.

 The only major change will be that employers will no longer be able to request a secret ballot vote. Employees will be able to request a secret ballot vote when 30% of the total bargaining unit employees want the secret vote.
The Employee Free Choice Act Does Not Eliminate the Secret Ballot Election Process for Choosing Union Representation
The Employee Free Choice Act is an amendment to the existing NLRA which makes no change to the current election process.
o It does not amend, repeal or eliminate the NLRA election process, which is set forth in Section 9(c)(1)(A). This provision will continue unchanged.
o If the Employee Free Choice Act is enacted, a petition filed under Section 9(c)(1)(A), which meets the rules of that section, will still initiate an election process.
o According to the House Committee on Education and Labor Report on H.R. 800, “[t]his section does not eliminate the NLRB election process, which remains an option for employees as it is under current law.” 2/16/07, pp. 25-26.

Currently, many workers try to avoid the election process because it is company-controlled, coercive and unfair.
The Employee Free Choice Act simply amends the NLRA representation system by modifying the already-existing majority sign-up process.
o It puts the choice of how to form a union in the hands of workers rather than their employer by changing the majority sign-up process to require companies to honor their employees’ choice when employees decide to demonstrate their union support in this manner. Instead of their company controlling how workers organize, workers will have the choice of which path to use.

An election process has never been the only way workers can form their union under the NLRA.
o Section 9(a) of the current NLRA requires that an employer bargain with "representatives designated or selected for purposes of collective bargaining." It has never required that the representative be elected.

The NLRA has always maintained and regulated two paths to union representation: Both have been in existence 1935 and both have been endorsed by the NLRB, the Supreme Court and Congress:
o (a) election: Section 9(c)(1)(A) requires that a petition be filed which is supported by a significant number of workers in order for the NLRB to conduct an election; the employer cannot veto the election process; and
o (b) majority sign-up: widely used and also governed and regulated by the NLRB, it requires that: (1) a majority of employees sign authorization cards or petitions indicating their choice for union representation; and, (2) their employer agree to recognize the union based on the majority support.
The Employee Free Choice Act will allow workers – not companies – to choose how they form their union by removing the veto power companies now have with the majority sign-up process.

03/01/09 11:25 pm

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