American Rights at Work yesterday announced a nationwide $3 million ad campaign in support of the Employee Free Choice Act bill.
Here is one of the ads:
Hope & Change - National Ad for the Employee Free Choice Act
It is real hope and change for America.
Why EFCA? Because one in five union activists gets illegally fired prior to an election for unionization, according to economist Dean Baker and NLRB data. This is why we need EFCA. It will level the playing field between workers and companies. It will give working people a fighting chance. And it will help build a new economy in which a middle class is strong and the wealthy do not steal all that is there, i.e., an American economy based on our values and not on the values of Bush and Wall Street.
More after after the fold.
Here's another of the ads:
We Don't Ask - National Ad for the Employee Free Choice Act
Corporations are pouring money into the Chamber of Commerce and other campaigns against EFCA, because they know it will make real change and provide real hope to working people. The American Rights at Work TV campaign will help, along with other labor campaigns like the ones by SEIU, Change to Win, and the AFL-CIO, but people in the netroots also can help by spreading the word. To spread the word, however, requires understanding what EFCA is.
What's the Employee Free Choice Act? The core of the bill allows workers to form a union if 50% plus one sign a card indicating they wish to form a union:
The Employee Free Choice Act would allow workers to form a union through "majority sign-up." If workers know they want a union, we should have laws that let them have it. The Employee Free Choice Act would require an employer to recognize its employees’ union when a majority has signed union authorization cards. Under current law, management can refuse to recognize a union even when 100 percent of employees have signed authorization cards. After a majority of workers have signed cards, an employer can still call for a separate election. Under the current system, then, the employer gets to decide whether a separate election is necessary. The Employee Free Choice Act would give this choice to the workers.
American Rights at Work
It also will strengthen penalties against employers who break the law and allow employers or employees to request mediation if they’re unable to negotiate a first contract.
Why do we need EFCA? Because it has beeen an unfair playing field against union organization for almost 30 years or more. Economist Dean Baker spoke forcefully yesterday about worker intimidation by business when workers try to have a union election:
Under the the NLRB election system, between the time an election is announced and the day of the vote, employees are vulnerable to coercion by management, Baker says. There’s a fundamental power imbalance: Bosses can fire organizers, but organizers can’t fire the bosses.
"There’s a tendency to dismiss [harassment, but] one in five organizers ends up getting fired, according to the NLRB," Baker said on Tuesday.
Washington Independent: Economist: One in Five Union Organizers Gets Canned
It's not just rhetoric. People get fired all the time.
Michael Kaib, a server at the LAX Hilton, and Alicia Melgarejo, a housekeeper at the LAX Hilton, were two of the 16 workers who fasted for a living wage in December of last year. On March 13th, both workers were fired by the LAX Hilton. The workers believe they were targeted because of their union organizing efforts and their active support of the city’s living wage law. Both workers had taken active roles in the 2 year old union organizing drive at the hotel, taking part in picket lines and press conferences outside of the hotel, in plain view of management and security guards.
Michael Kaib and Alicia Melgarejo
Rodolfo Chavez used to work as a delivery truck driver at Goya Foods in Miami, Florida. But after ten years of service to the very profitable company, he was fired for supporting a union.
Rodolfo and his co-workers’ story is a classic example of why the current NLRB process doesn’t work. The Goya workers first voted for union representation through UNITE (now UNITE HERE) back in 1998 by an overwhelming margin. Yet, more than eight years later, despite winning every single decision brought before the NLRB, they still don’t have a union contract or the improvements in wages and benefits that comes with it.
Rodolfo Chavez
There are many stories. More about courageous workers who stood up for fairness and paid a price at EFCA: Workers' Stories
It matters to all of us. Not only is worker intimidation by business unjust, but when workers are free to choose to join a union, our economy can work for everyone again. The Employee Free Choice Act will help America’s working families improve their standard of living, fix a broken system that gives corporations far too much power, and restore fairness and the promise of the American Dream to many.
Building a middle class is the key to a healthy economy. The Great Class Stratification of the last thirty years led to the Depression we now are experiencing. A fair economy is a healthy economy. FDR showed that with the New Deal and we had more fairness, and a healthy economy, for 40 years while unions were relatively strong. Now Obama will show it again.
To me, this is the one of the most important bills in Congress after the stimulus package. We must rebuild our economy, but in doing so, we must build a fair economy. Spending taxpayer money merely to put the wealthy back in power over working people would be a huge mistake. We cannot return to the economy of 2001 to 2008. Getting the economy out of the ditch is the first step, but building a fair economy that allows workers to have a fighting chance is the essential next step. EFCA (and health care reform) are keys to rebuilding our economy.
For more on EFCA and this campaign, go here.
Barack Obama supports EFCA and voted for it when he was in the Senate:
It’s time we had a President who will stand up for working men and women by building an economy that rewards not just wealth, but work and the workers who create it. It’s time you had a partner in the White House who knows that the struggles facing working families can’t be solved by spending billions of dollars on more tax breaks for big corporations and wealthy CEOs, and that hardworking families need immediate relief.
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It’s time you had a President who honors organized labor - who’s walked on picket lines; who doesn’t choke on the word "union"; who lets our unions do what they do best and organize our workers; and who will finally make the Employee Free Choice Act the law of the land.
With a Democratic Congress and soon-to-be President Obama supporting EFCA, the corporations' only hope is to filibuster in the Senate. We have 59 votes for it (counting all Dems, Sanders, Lieberman and assuming Al Franken is seated). We need 60 votes to break a filibuster. That means all Dems must vote for cloture and at least one Republican (Spector supported EFCA and voted for it in 2008).
Explain the truth about EFCA to your friends and neighbors. Spread these You Tubes in your blogs and email lists.
Building unions will create a strong middle class and a permanent progressive majority. It's the right road.
Update I: From Elana Levin of UNITE HERE in the comments, SEIU's Report: The Economic Argument for the Employee Free Choice Act.
Here are some highlights:
What we've found isn't much of a surprise, and it makes sense: economic success occurs when rising wages spur consumer spending.
That's exactly what the Employee Free Choice Act is designed to deliver, and the legislation will play a central role in building a strong middle class that will usher in the next era of American economic strength and prosperity.
New research makes a solid case as to why the Employee Free Choice Act would be a "stimulus" that gets our economy back on track. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that if 5 million service workers join unions:
5 million workers would get a 22 percent raise on average, or an additional $7,000 a year;
$34 billion in total new wages would flow into the economy;
900,000 jobs would be lifted above the poverty wage for a family of four ($10.22/hr); and
Between 1.8 million and 3 million dependent children would share in these benefits.
The economic impact on individuals would be about four times as large as the recent federal minimum wage increase, and allow nearly six times more in new wages to flow into the economy.
Report Facts and Figures here in Path to Prosperity
Thanks, Elana, for that link and all you do for working people every day.