Clark Ruppert on Employee Free Choice Act

[Omaha Steve]

Run time: 01:17 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UR8hqmYCjs   Posted on YouTube: March 03, 2008 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: March 07, 2008 By DU Member: Omaha Steve Views on DU: 253

 

Clark Ruppert is the president of the York-Adams County (Pa.) Central Labor Council and a member of Machinists (IAM) District Lodge 98. Ruppert and the unions of the York-Adams labor council mobilized local support for the Employee Free Choice Act and that effort paid off in February when York Mayor John Brenner proclaimed his support for the Employee Free Choice Act.

Ruppert says local union members are getting ready for the November elections with plans for phone banks, labor walks and worksite fliers under way. One big push, he says, will be to let union members know the positions Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) holds on vital working family issues—the wrong side.

Lenny Sapozhnikov, AFL-CIO deputy state director for Pennsylvania, recently met with Ruppert to learn more about what the York-Adams unions are up to in organizing, politics, community service and more.

Sapozhnikov: Tell us more about your experience with new union organizing and why we need the Employee Free Choice Act.

Ruppert: It is important to get the Employee Free Choice Act passed in Congress because the working people of this country have been pushed down in the past several decades. Unions have helped create the middle class historically. The way the economy is going right now, union density has gone down and the middle class is getting pushed down.

Yet, I find that many people want to join the union. But when they try to organize, the employers use captive audience meetings and illegal scare tactics, which they get away with under the current NLRB , which does not serve our interests. We have a particular experience recently that illustrates the sore need for the Employee Free Choice Act.

FULL story at link.