Under the first Amendment Americans are guarenteed the right to associate with whom they want, however the Republicans have been preventing a vast majority of people in this country from exercising this right. Its time to reverse this unconstittional policy, I am asking you to support the Employee Free Choice Act.
This about more then workers rights, this is about freedom.
As our good friend David Sirota wrote:
A 2005 survey found "53 percent of nonunion workers - that's more than 50 million people - want to join a union, if given the choice."
Yet, they are not members of unions. In fact the "share of American workers carrying union cards has plunged from over 20 percent in 1980 to under 13 percent in 2005, and almost half of those are government employees."(economist.com)
What is going here? It is basically a war on unions.
Cornell University researcher Kate Bronfenbrenner writes, "at least 5 percent of workers involved in unionization campaigns are fired, which is both quite illegal and quite routine: Companies would rather pay the nominal fines than pay their workers higher wages and lose the absolute control they hold over the work lives of their employees."(washingtonPost.com)
So First off workers are being fired for attempting to Unionize
and second as the Havard Political review reports:
Union-busters have created a multi-million dollar industry that seems to have had serious effects on the state of the union movement. These anti-union law firms and consulting agencies are increasingly enlisted by union-wary employers to keep labor from organizing—without violating labor laws.
The National Labor Relations Board reports that:
"Every year, over 20,000 U.S. workers are illegally fired, demoted, laid off, suspended without pay, or denied work by their employers as a result of union activity.
This figure does not include the thouands of workers who are harrased, threated, or intimadated.
Even if the workers of an organization decide to unionize, there is no law forcing companies to negotiate with them.
The Employee Free Choice Act addresses these problems.
- It allows a union to be formed when a simple majority of workers decide they want one.
- This vote can be done be secret ballot.
- The Employee Free Choice Act allows a new union to request federal mediation services if no agreement on a first contract has been reached after 90 days of bargaining, and refers the dispute to binding arbitration if the mediation is not successful.
- The Employee Free Choice Act increases penalties for illegal firing of employees and other anti-union activity, and gives organizers the right to seek court orders to stop employers from engaging in certain prohibited activity.
It is time to fight for workers rights.
The Center for American Progress was very good in providing me with a lot to the content of this diary.