Thwarting workers

On March 1 of this year Congress passed the much needed labor law reform bill known as the Employee Free Choice Act of 2007 (EFCA), and a vote on the senate version of the bill is expected soon.

As currently written, EFCA would modify the National Labor relations Act (NLRA) in three important ways. First, it would require stronger penalties for violation of workers rights to organize. Second, it would provide for mandatory mediation and arbitration for first-contract disputes if needed. And third, it would allow workers to form or join a union on the basis of signed authorization cards from a majority of the employees.

Through a massive campaign of disinformation, corporate executives and their Republican representatives are exerting a vigorous effort to prevent EFCA from becoming law--but not for their stated reason of preserving the right of workers to select union representation by the use of a secret-ballot election. EFCA would not, as their disinformation campaign would have folks believe, abolish secret ballot elections in union representation elections. Under EFCA, workers could still certify their union representation choice through a secret-ballot election if that's what they wanted to do. Plus, establishing a union through signed authorization cards is already permitted under current law.

So why, then, are corporate executives adamantly opposed to EFCA? Because what EFCA would do is to eliminate management's ability under the current law to insist on a so-called secret-ballot election when presented with signed union authorization cards from from a majority of its workers--even from 100% of the workers! By being able to insist on an election, management gains weeks and weeks of time of time during which they put on a virulent, one-sided and many times illegal anti-union campaign designed to intimidate and coerce their workers from joining or supporting a union. It is this time frame that corporate executives are really fighting so hard to preserve, and it is no surprise that they are doing so through the use of lies and misrepresentation--the very same tactics they use every day in this country to thwart their employees right to freedom of association.

Sadly, the NLRA has become a union-avoidance tool of management (pdf file). EFCA would help to restore the NLRA to its intended purpose, which, as the law itself says (in the last paragraph of Section 1), is to "[encourage] the practice and procedure of collective bargaining and...[protect] the exercise by workers of full freedom of association, self-organization, and designation of representatives of their own choosing, for the purpose of negotiating the terms and conditions of their employment or other mutual aid or protection."

(NOTE: a version of this post, edited by the editors of the newspaper, appeared in today's edition of The Bryan-College Station Eagle.)