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Pass the Employee Free Choice Act

(This article by APWU Secretary-Treasurer Terry R. Stapleton first appeared in the May/June 2009 issue of The American Postal Worker magazine.)

Working families are finding it harder to make ends meet. Wages just aren’t keeping up with the cost of living, and job security, health coverage, and the prospects of a secure retirement are vanishing. Workers are hurting, and the entire economy is showing the effects.

Corporations and their CEOs have all the power. Unfortunately, labor laws put the decisions about workers forming unions and bargaining squarely in the hands of the corporations. In our company-dominated system, corporations can deny workers the freedom to choose to join a union, and they have free rein to coerce, intimidate, and fire employees to discourage them from trying to form one.

“The best opportunity we have to start rebuilding this country is to rebuild the middle class, which we can do by giving workers the power to bargain for a better life.”

The system is broken. Corporations have cut back on workers’ wages and healthcare benefits, while executive pay continues to skyrocket. They spend millions to fight union organizing campaigns while protecting their own perks and benefits. Workers face the threat of being fired for union activities, and even when there is a successful organizing drive, the companies often will simply refuse to negotiate a contract with a newly formed union.

Unions can bargain for a better life. The best opportunity we have to start rebuilding this country is to rebuild the middle class, which we can do by giving workers the power to bargain for a better life. Union workers have better wages and are more likely to have health coverage, pensions, and protection on the job.

Signing the Employee Free Choice Act into law would give workers a fair chance by:

• Allowing them to form unions simply by signing cards authorizing union representation;
  
  
• Providing mediation and arbitration for first-contract disputes; and
  
  
• Establishing stronger penalties for violations of employee rights when workers seek to form a union and during first-contract negotiations.

The Employee Free Choice Act will help build an economy that works for everyone. Supported by legislators and millions of workers around the country, the EFCA would level the playing field and put the power to choose a union back where it belongs — in the hands of workers. It will restore workers’ power and thus strengthen the economy for the long term.

What’s In It for You

The Employee Free Choice Act is the most significant labor legislation in decades. This bill would allow workers who want to form unions a fair opportunity to do so. It is important not only to those workers, but to workers who already are in unions. Corporations increase their profit margins by cutting workers pay and benefits. A large pool of non-union workers allows these corporations to put downward pressure on workers’ attempts to negotiate for decent pay.

During negotiations over postal wages, for example, management uses “pay comparability” to argue that postal pay is excessive.

The plan of the businesses who want to privatize postal operations is to make a profit by first contracting the most profitable work away from the USPS and its union workers, and then to have the work performed by unorganized, lower-paid workers. Coupled with excessive USPS discount rates, this has made it easy for the mailing houses to turn a profit. As organized workers, we are backed by a union that has successfully negotiated decent wages and benefits, but we have become a target of big business. We need to take the bull’s-eye off our backs and put it where it belongs – on the back of the bosses who exploit workers and who are willing to spend millions to keep a broken system in place.

A survey of non-union workers reveals that 60million of these workers want to have a union in their workplace. Among the many “unorganized” are truck drivers, custodians, mail processors, parcel sorters, and retail clerks who work for contractors that perform the same work as USPS employees.

The Employee Free Choice Act would allow those workers a fair opportunity to choose to forma union and it would help them improve their standard of living. The Employee Free Choice Act will allow workers to decide whether they will use majority sign-up (“card check”) or a secret ballot to decide if they want to form a union. If 30 percent of the workers say that they want an election to determine whether to form a union, they can have one.

Once they have a union, workers, of course, vote to elect their union representatives. And in another key provision of the Employee Free Choice Act, after workers have decided to forma union, their first contract will be mediated if it cannot be negotiated. Too often we have seen employers who, having lost the fight against workers forming a union, refuse to negotiate a contract — which was the very reason workers formed the union in the first place. The EFCA would prevent employers from avoiding negotiations with newly formed unions.

What to Do

With the understanding that it is in the interest of APWU members to help pass the Employee Free Choice Act, local leaders and members are asked to:

• Urge the Obama administration to issue an Executive Order to impose progressive labor relations standards on federal contractors. These employers should be required to recognize unions based on “card checks;” remain neutral in union representation elections; and participate in interest arbitration for first contracts. (This would help the organizing efforts in the mailing, shipping, and trucking firms that perform postal work.)
  
  
• Urge the Obama administration to take an aggressive stand disqualifying contractors who violate federal labor laws.
  
  
• Educate our members about the EFCA and solicit their participation in the fight to get it passed, not only because it is a good thing to do, but because when the wages and benefits are raised for other workers, it helps us to secure our own jobs.
  
  
• Recruit local activists to take part in training that the AFL-CIO will be offering to get out the message to union members.
  
  

• Click here to contribute to the EFCA ad campaign.

  Donate to the cause: The AFL-CIO will be buying TV ads to make the case for the EFCA. We believe that the business coalition will have a war chest of more than $200 million dedicated to defeating the this legislation, and the labor federation is trying to raise a war chest of its own to get out the union message. (For more information about how to properly authorize donations to the AFL-CIO for this effort, contact the Secretary-Treasurer’s Department.)
  
  
• Promote the EFCA and educate members at the local level, in union newsletters and on radio and TV, and be ready to fight back: The primary argument employers make against the Employee Free Choice Act is that there would no longer be secret balloting in union-representation drives. Ask yourself this: When have corporations been concerned about protecting the worker’s right to choose? We have to make sure our members understand that the fox doesn’t try to protect the rights of the chickens; the fox wants only to make sure that the chickens are unorganized, so they remain easy pickings. But the business interests think that they can get a lot of negative mileage out of a “secret-ballot” misinformation campaign.
  
  
• Invite state and regional AFL-CIO leaders to your meetings, seminars, and conventions to talk about the Employee Free Choice Act, and show the AFL-CIO video at your meetings.

The Employee Free Choice Act should be a top priority, for you, for the APWU, and for the country. It’s a matter of your own job security, as well as a step in the direction of rebuilding and strengthening America’s middle class.

 

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