Guest essay: EFCA will restore a forsaken middle class in U.S.

[Omaha Steve]

By ROBERT FINK JR.

Restoring good wages, health care, retirement security and good jobs -- this is the way to rebuild middle class America, and this is what the Pennsylvania union movement does best.

Today, we have an opportunity to rebuild the American middle class after years of assaults. The Employee Free Choice Act will help middle class families regain their place in the U.S. economy.

How? By providing working people with the opportunity for a real voice on the job, the power to negotiate with employers for better benefits, working conditions, safety and wages.

Why aren't more workers in United States joining unions? A new poll tells us that nearly 60 percent of eligible workers would join a union if they could. So what's going on?

Today, employers dominate the process of forming a union, spending hundreds of millions of dollars and involving managers throughout the company to oppose organizing efforts, even though labor law clearly states that workers, not management, should make this decision.

Opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act claim they're supporting democracy by insisting that only secret ballot elections can truly determine workers' choice. But workers today aren't voting under fair conditions, according to Professor Gordon Lafer, an expert on labor law at the University of Oregon. Lafer's two years of extensive research found that NLRB elections "are characterized by an extraordinary level of illegal activity," he recently told Congress.

FULL story at link.