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America Needs Employee Free Choice ActApril 2009More than ever, working people need a way to get aheadAmerica’s working people are stretched as never before. Wages are dropping, health care costs are rising and pensions are disappearing. People are very worried their children will be worse off than they are. Unions are route to the middle classUnions members make 30 percent more than workers who don’t have a union. That’s about $200 a week, or $10,00 a year! Union members are 50 percent more likely to have employer-provided health insurance, and 67 percent of union members are covered by defined-benefit pension plans — compared with only 15 percent of workers who don’t have unions. We need the Employee Free Choice ActThe Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) would put the choice of whether to form a union back in workers’ hands by giving them the option of majority sign-up, an alternative to the current company-dominated system. (Full text of EFCA, Library of Congress) EFCA guarantees companies can’t just drag their feet on a first contract. Today, even when workers win their union almost half never reach a first contract because of company delays. To guarantte workers can win a union contract, EFCA provides for mediation or binding arbitration when needed. Sixty million people who don’t have unions say they’d join one tomorrow — too few ever get the chance. Companies routinely intimidate, harass, coerce and even fire people who try to form unions — and current labor law is helpless to stop them. The penalties are so slight for breaking the law that companies simply consider it the cost of doing business. |
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