Berger-Marks Foundation News Archives

Yale New Haven Hospital Calls for New Union Election

Bill vs. pay discrimination approved by House Committee

Taken from PAI information

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Summer schools for union women

Thanks to CLUW for providing this information

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Employee Free Choice Act introduced into Senate March 29

House voted 241-185 for worker rights

Information from PAI & Working Families

The Employee Free Choice Act -- the single most important legislation in 70 years to ensure workers the freedom to organize -- was introduced into the Senate by Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.)

All workers, organized and unorganized, are urged to urge their Senators to support the act at the Working Families web site. The U.S. House passed a similar bill by a strong 241-185 margin on March 1, with 228 Democrats and 13 Republicans voting for it and two Democrats--Oklahoman Dan Boren and Mississippian Gene Taylor -- voting against it.

Private workers need equal rights

Why is it that four out of five of the workers who successfully unionized over the last 18 months work in public jobs? Because, as AFL-CIO Organizing Director Stewart Acuff pointed out in a March 6 news conference, “workers have more rights in the public sector.” The bill would give private workers equal rights.

Friends and foes are lining up on both sides. Friends include presidential hopefuls Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and former Senator John Edwards.

Foes include management lawyers who testified against it and Senate Republicans who have promised their wealthy supporters to filibuster — talk to death — the Employee Free Choice Act. To stop them, backers need 60 votes in the 100-member Senate. President Bush vows to veto the legislation, and strong support will be needed to override that veto.

Mobilizations, March 31-April 4 campus Day of Action

Several union presidents led this march for EFCA late last year.

Unions are mobilizing support from stewards and members, plus allies in religious and community organizations, and reaching out to other potential backers. It will take 60 Senate votes to halt a planned GOP filibuster.

Planned tactics include community hearings, demonstrations, e-mails and phone calls--like the 200,000 e-mails that unionists mailed to representatives in the six weeks before the House vote. It will also include one-on-one meetings between workers and senators, labor delegation visits to senators’ home offices, Worker Rights Board hearings on employer labor law-breaking, and a week of action on more than 200 campuses nationwide, from March 31-April 4, focusing not just on mistreatment of workers at those colleges but also on the larger issue of workers’ rights. Minnesota just became the latest of 13 states and numerous local governments that have also urged Congress to pass the EFCA.

What EFCA will do: worker clout through card checks

Workers get a much better shot at unionizing when they they can choose a union through a card-check, a procedure where a majority of workers sign authorization cards, validated by the National Labor Relations Board. The union movement says unions should be automatically certified as the bargaining representative for workers after a card check. That's how Cingular Wireless workers became CWA members, for example. But under today's laws the employer has the right to instead insist on a drawn-out NLRB election, which often leads to an ugly, delay-ridden campaign where professional union-busters encourage companies to illegally threaten and fire workers, because the system of worker justice has broken down.

EFCA would allow card check without employer approval, and curb employers' ability to harass, intimidate and fire workers, and threaten to close and move plants.