The Coming Fight Over the Employee Free Choice Act

War is about to break out in Washington DC over the Employee Free Choice Act. The EFCA promises to make it easier for workers to unionize. Naturally, business interests are going to stop at nothing to kill EFCA.

Labor unions have played an important role in improving workplace safety. Unions give workers a voice on the job and a way to say no to hazardous conditions. Non-union workers are at greater risk for employer abuse, and workers cannot count on law alone to protect them.

For example, at least one meatpacking worker in ten is injured on the job every year. Government safety inspectors are only able to inspect about 75 of the more than 5,000 meatpacking plants annually. For another example, statistics show us that most asbestos exposure happens in a workplace, and asbestos exposure leads to mesothelioma and other deadly diseases.

In the decades after World War II about one-third of private-sector workers were in unions. Today, only 8 percent of workers are unionized. Some state laws make union organizing nearly impossible. Employers can force workers to attend anti-union meetings. Supervisors pressure workers to reveal their preferences for a union. Workers who are illegally fired for organizing a union — which happens in about a quarter of union organizing campaigns — face years of legal battles to get their lost wages and jobs.

The EFCA would allow an employee to choose to join a union by signing a membership card. The act does not deny workers their right to vote in a union election, as some conservatives maintain, but rather allows workers to choose between signing a membership card and having an election. Supporters say this is necessary because employers have found too many ways to corrupt the old election process.

The act also provides that either employers or employees may request mediation of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) if the two sides cannot reach agreement. Too often employers drag out the contract process by refusing to bargain. And the act provides tougher penalties for employers who try to strong-arm employees out of forming unions.

Conservative groups are waging an all-out propaganda campaign to persuade Americans that the membership card procedure is somehow unfair to workers and that EFCA will kill jobs and destroy business. In future blog posts I’ll be looking into these claims in more depth.

March 23, 2009
Barbara O’Brien

Sources:

American Rights at Work
David Madland and Karla Walter, “Bush Shirks Role as Top Labor Cop,” Today’s Workplace, September 8, 2008

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