Better Wages, Benefits Will Come With Free Choice Act

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.theday.com/re.aspx?re=b3e351be-d2ae-4d93-9d40-a7eab83ee9a7

Published on 4/5/2009



By Associated Press
Casino employees and members of the United Auto Workers Union protest at the opening of the MGM Grand at Foxwoods in May 2008. Mashantucket Pequot Tribe-operated casino workers have actively pursued union organization in recent years.


By Greg Kotecki

Why does the country need the Employee Free Choice Act? The answer is simple, because we need to rebuild the middle class.

Unions have historically provided higher wages and benefits as compared to their non-union counterparts. According to the Center for American Progress, unionized workers earn 11.3 percent more, or $2.26 more per hour. Union workers nationwide are 28.2 percent more likely to have employer-provided health insurance and 53.9 percent more likely to have employer-provided pensions.

Unions boost wages

Workers in low-wage industries, women, African-American, and Latino workers have higher wages in unionized work places than in non-union workplaces. For all my conservative friends, these benefits are private sector not public sector and controlled by market forces not taxation.

The proposed Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) would address the current flaws in the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). From the beginning of NLRA, union elections were just one method used to determine majority interest in unions.

Card-check recognition was a widely accepted method used and resulted in millions of workers gaining the right to bargain collectively. This all changed in 1947 when Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act. Taft-Hartley swung the pendulum away from workers' rights and it has never swung back. Taft-Hartley began the long succession of regulatory restrictions and hostile National Labor Relations Board decisions that have helped undermine the NLRA's stated policy of encouraging collective bargaining.

FULL story at link.

[bbinacan]

1. Votes should be secret.

PERIOD!!!!

[Omaha Steve]

2. And with EFCA they can be

With EFCA, all the employee has to do is mark ELECTION on the card. It puts the power to decide on election OR card check in the hands of the employees, not the employer. Shouldn't that be their decision? You don't hear that from those that oppose the act. I wonder why?

[bbinacan]

3. Will people know who

checked election and who did not?

[Omaha Steve]

4. NO!

The card can be snail mailed to the NLRB. Nobody but the employee and the NLRB need know.

[bbinacan]

5. George McGovern seems to

disagree with you.

[Omaha Steve]

6. Labor didn't back George when he ran for president

Why not read the text of the act and decide for yourself at the Library of Congress?

Read the text of the Employee Free Choice Act: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:H.R.1409:


Does the Employee Free Choice Act take away so-called secret ballot elections?

No. If one-third of workers want to have an NLRB election at their workplace, they can still ask the federal government to hold an election. The Employee Free Choice Act simply gives them another option—majority sign-up.

“Elections” may sound like the most democratic approach, but the NLRB process is nothing like democratic elections in our society—presidential elections, for example—because one side has all the power. The employer controls the voters’ paychecks and livelihood, has unlimited access to speak against the union in the workplace while restricting pro-union speech and has the freedom to intimidate and coerce the voters.