Why EFCA?

I've written about the need for the Employee Free Choice Act (here, here, and here), but the following commentary in The American Prospect online edition by Bruce Raynor, president of UNITE HERE, provides a powerful and poignant example of everything that's been wrong for the past quarter century with the National Labor Relations Act and National Labor Relations Board:

Losing By Winning
What one NLRB case this year tells us about our broken collective bargaining laws.
By Bruce Raynor
Web Exclusive: 12.21.06


"There's no reason to subject the workers to an election."


In the past year, full-page ads taken out in The New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal by the anti-union organization Center for Union Facts featured this quotation and my picture, alongside pictures of Cuban leader Fidel Castro and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. Then, the caption: "Who Said It?"

Here's the answer: I said it. And I believe it. And the National Labor Relations Board issued a decision in August that shows just how right I am.

Eight years ago our union made the mistake of putting our faith in the current NLRB election system on behalf of a group of tough, dedicated, largely immigrant warehouse workers at the Goya Foods facility in Miami, Florida, who were looking to improve their economic lot and to be treated with respect and dignity on the job. Now, in 2006, these workers have won every single legal decision brought before the NLRB, but they have not gotten good raises, a union contract, better treatment or any other improvements. If this is winning, it's hard to imagine what losing looks like.

Back in 1998, workers at Goya Foods of Florida, the largest Hispanic-owned company in the United States, voted overwhelmingly for union representation by UNITE (now UNITE HERE) by a combined vote of 83 to 31 in two separate elections. These elections vicious "vote no" campaigns by company management, which included harassing workers who supported the union, threatening workers, and holding mandatory meetings full of anti-union diatribes. In an amazing show of courage and mutual support, the Latino workers persevered and won the union election in the giant Florida warehouse of this very profitable company. The workers were looking for a solution to their problems of poor treatment, low wages, expensive health insurance, and supervisor favoritism, and hoped they had found it by electing to have union representation.

After the union was certified at Goya, the company embarked on a concerted campaign to frustrate the workers' desires. The plan was to utilize the delays and the lack of powerful remedies inherent in our country's labor laws to weaken and divide the Company's employees to the point where they would give up on forming a union.

The workers and their union representatives fought back tenaciously. We forced the company to the bargaining table and kept them there. We organized rallies, car caravans, meetings, and other public events to keep the workers' spirits up and to involve the Miami community in our struggle with a company that largely serves the Latino community. We filed scores of charges with the National Labor Relations Board, challenging the company's recalcitrant conduct in bargaining, their unilateral changes in working conditions, and their discriminatory treatment of those who dared to openly support the union.

Eventually, the NLRB's General Counsel charged Goya with at least twenty-three separate, textbook violations of U.S. labor law, including the usual threats of job loss, plant closings, interrogation, discrimination in work assignments, and the firing of at least four union supporters. Later in 1999, the Company ceased bargaining with us and -- illegally -- withdrew recognition of our union.

The union, the workers, and the General Counsel took the case to a trial under federal labor law before an Administrative Law Judge in June 2000. In February 2001, the judge ruled in favor of the union and workers on every single issue in a well written and thoughtfully reasoned decision. He ruled that the four Goya workers were fired illegally for supporting the union and recommended that the NLRB order their reinstatement and back wages (no penalties are provided by the National Labor Relations Act). He found the company guilty of threats against workers who supported the union, interrogation of union supporters, and failure to bargain in good faith as required by federal law.

Of course the Company appealed -- creating another delay of justice. But by July of 2001, the record was complete: the briefs were in, the Board had the transcripts and the exhibits, and the case was, as they say, "ripe for decision."

I don't know what the Board was doing over the next five years and two months.

(please go here for remainder of article)

In the last Congress, close to a majority of representatives in the House (216) and in the Senate (44) co-sponsored the Employee Free Choice Act. Given the political makeup of the current 110th Congress, we should see a majority in both houses signing on as co-sponsors once this most important piece of legislation for workers' rights is introduced in a couple of weeks.