Let the Workers Decide (EFCA)

[Omaha Steve]

http://blogs.denverpost.com/eletters/2008/11/24/let-the-workers-decide/

by DP Opinion on November 24, 2008

Re: “Unions’ creepy push against secret ballot,” Nov. 11 Froma Harrop online-only column.

Long before Wall Street’s investment firms started going belly up, working families were struggling to make ends meet. Recent months have only made things much worse.

If working people are going to have any chance of sharing in the benefits of an economic recovery plan, then the playing field must be leveled.

That’s one reason 60 million people say they’d form a union tomorrow, but too few will ever get the chance. Employers routinely harass, intimidate and even fire people who form unions, and labor law is helpless to stop them. The Employee Free Choice Act will restore working people’s single best ticket to the middle class - the freedom to form a union and bargain for a better life.

Despite what big business charges, workers can still vote in a secret ballot union election under the Employee Free Choice Act. This legislation simply gives them, not the company, the choice of how to form their union - through an election or majority sign up.

Opponents such as Froma Harrop pretend to show concern for whether workers will be intimidated into signing union authorization cards. But let’s be clear. Since the inception of the National Labor Relations Act in 1935, only 42 cases have found evidence of this kind of fraud or coercion on workers’ part. Compare that to the 31,358 cases during 2005 alone, in which companies illegally fired or discriminated against workers for exercising their federally protected labor rights.

America’s workers deserve a free and fair choice of whether to improve their lives and futures through unions. How they make that choice should be up to them, not their employers.

Mike Cerbo, Executive Director, Colorado AFL-CIO