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The Big Lie being spread about EFCA
In recent weeks, you may have seen ads on TV or news releases or letters to the editor in your local newspaper bashing “big labor” and the Employee Free Choice Act.
The EFCA is federal legislation — passed by the U.S. House but stalled in the U.S. Senate — that will make it easier for workers to organize unions. Both the AFL-CIO and the Change to Win Federation have united to make passing EFCA a priority for the new Congress in 2009.
In attacking the EFCA, opponents distort the facts and charge that the legislation would end secret ballot elections in union organizing drives. Not true.
The foundation of modern labor law, the Wagner Act of 1935, provided a path to union recognition when a majority of workers in a workplace signed union authorization cards — simple and fair.
When labor adversaries passed the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947 over President Truman’s veto, however, employers gained the right to reject the workers’ union authorization cards and to petition the National Labor Relations Board to conduct an election to determine if a workplace should become union.
But the NLRB election process bears little resemblance to elections to choose our leaders for local, state and federal government. In the run-up to NLRB elections, employers pull out all the stops to intimidate workers into rejecting the union. These abuses are well-documented, including mandatory attendance at anti-union meetings, one-on-one meetings, threats to close the business if the union wins the vote, and even firing workers for pro-union activity.
The EFCA would give workers, not employers, the right to decide how to express the choice about going union: through the card-check process OR through the NLRB election process.
If passed, the EFCA will help expand the number of workers who enjoy union wages and union benefits like health insurance and retirement plans. If passed, the EFCA will help expand the number of workers who have a voice on the job through their union.
The EFCA is about empowering workers. And that’s why you’re now hearing more about it from the opposition.
So beware of messages from groups with the nice-sounding names like “The Coalition for a Democratic Workplace” or “Minnesotans for Employee Freedom.” These are anti-union, business-funded groups not at all concerned with the rights of workers.
These anti-union groups aim to distort the issues involving the Employee Free Choice Act. They’re using broadcast media. They’re using print media. They’re using “push polling” — spreading disinformation in the guise of a poll to sway, not measure, public opinion.
And now this right-wing smear is extending beyond the EFCA to attack our labor-endorsed candidates for U.S. House and U.S. Senate.
Our foes would like nothing better than to distract voters from the real issues in this campaign — jobs, health care, the economy. To do so, they’re spreading false charges and smearing unions, the EFCA, and labor’s endorsed candidates.
Don’t let them get away with it.
Bill McCarthy is president of the Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation. This commentary is reprinted from the Minneapolis Labor Review.
Comments
EFCA is bad for MN
Bill, you are misleading at best. EFCA would empower unions not workers. Workers do not need to have their vote in the open. They would feel pressure from both the union and the company. No one, not the union or the company, needs to know how I voted. This is bad for the worker, bad for Minnesota and bad for the United States.
This will cost Obama the
This will cost Obama the Presidency. Minnesotans aren’t stupid. By making Employee-free Choice Act a litmus test for its support, Organized Labor shoots itself in the foot…again. This is the gang that can’t shoot straight. No election-free authorizations of union to collect mandatory dues and political contributions from workers is going are going to fly in this country. No candidate willing to give up this workers’ right is going to be elected President.
Anti democracy is pervasive
Anti democracy is pervasive in this country. The tactics of the boss in power get downplayed compared to “uppity” workers trying to protect their interests. Fear of unions comes from the the uncomfortable contentiousness of workplace issues and from those that like the idea of a boss getting to direct people at will.
People need representation, sometimes it’s difficult, divisive, and self serving. But it is people setting out to get their interests protected. It is much closer to democracy than the industrial feudalism that we’re sliding into.
Those ads are heavily financed. Some people like that money and power, even if they have a just garage instead of the country club where wealthy hang out. We’re becoming a nation of servants, and cheap servants at that.
Time to start liking people instead of this underlying contempt for people.
efca
I have read the bill s1041 and it appears to me that this
case can happen: over 50 percent of the employees sign up
for a union (or individual) to represent them in collective bargaining. Then the representative can ask the NLRB to recognize the union and bingo the union is representing the group. No election. A person who did not sign the petition or card check had possibly no opportunity to vote on the union and might well have had no notice of the union card check campaign. There is nothing in the bill that requires all employees in the potential bargaining unit to know about the card check campaign and even if they do know there would be nothing they could do against it unless they were to start another petition for a different union. I am pro-union and I don’t approve of this.
Secondly what is with the funky language in EFCA that allows bargaining units to be represented by “an individual” instead of an organization? So they vote in the ‘union of Bob’ then
The Farm workers have a far far better type of legislation in this california bill AB2386: http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/postquery?bill_number=ab_2386&sess=CUR...what happens? Does the union dissolve when something happens to Bob? How can anyone run for president in the
‘union of Bob’? I don’t see at all the value in voting in an individual to represent a local. That does not jive with the concept of unions being run by democratic process.
Employee Free Choice Act
The plant I work at has a union and the president was handing out a slip to endorse the employee free choice act today. If you sign it, your put into a drawing for a Harley Davidson. I have to laugh because the only description of the act is that “it gives employees the freedom to choose a union and bargain, without management intimidation.” The Wagner Act already does this. This bill seems like it is only going to make the unions end up on the winning side. Respecting privacy is a higher value than any of this finger pointing. I grew up watching the steel industry leave Pittsburgh and head to Brazil, China, and a few other places. I watched the union higher ups leave as well with their nice pensions and shrug off the guys who paid the dues which supported them. Wake up. You have a right to collectively bargain and organize if you want.
Seeing this deceit makes me feel bad for the guys I work with who cant look up what this thing really is.
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