The Employee Free Choice Act

The Employee Free Choice Act is important because it will protect the rights of millions of Americans to freely choose a union and be able to bargain for better wages and working conditions.   The current so-called secret ballot elections don't allow employees a free opportunity to make their own decisions about unions:

• By the time employees get to vote (usually months after signing the card), the environment has been so poisoned by mandatory one-on-one and group meetings, intimidation and negative publicity that free and fair choice isn't an option.  No employee has free choice after being browbeaten by a supervisor to oppose the union or being told they may lose their job and livelihood if they vote for the union.
  
• Management can control the information workers can receive and routinely poison the process by intimidating, harassing, coercing and even firing people who try to organize unions (there's a one in five chance that an active union supporter will be illegally fired for union activity during an organizing campaign).

Simply put, EFCA allows workers to form unions when a majority have signed cards authorizing union representation, and 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.

EFCA supported by a bipartisan coalition in Congress (does your Member of Congress support it?), but the business community and its allies are applying enormous, well-funded pressure to hold back the populist economic vision supported by the voters in 2006, and we know several Democrats have sided with corporate interests over the interests of their constituents in the past.  The challenge now lies with the Democratic Party to resist outside pressures, stay unified for progressive achievements and pull Republicans across the aisle to support the populist economic agenda, of which EFCA is a key element:

• The "union advantage" is substantial. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, union members are much more likely to have health benefits and pensions.
  
• For people of color and women workers, the union impact is even greater. Women workers who are union members earn nearly $9,000 a year more than their non-union counterparts. For African-American workers, the union differential is also about $9,000, and for Latino workers the yearly advantage is more than $11,000.

The economic issues that unite the Democratic caucus in both the House and the Senate far outweigh the issues that divide them.  That's critical for the success of Democrats, and it's imperative for the well- being of American families.