Employee Free Choice Act: Helping Workers Bargain for a Better Life
America’s middle class families have lost significant ground over the past decade, as real wages stagnated even as workers’ productivity, costs of living, and consumer demand continued to rise. In these economic times it is more important than ever for workers to have a say about their job security, their wages, their retirement savings, and their health care. Strengthening and growing America’s middle class depends on the ability of employees to exercise their democratic rights at work.
The Employee Free Choice Act rightly leaves the choice of whether and how to form a union up to workers – not corporate executives.
The Employee Free Choice Act will help rebuild our nation’s middle class and make our economy work for everyone again.
The current system for forming unions and bargaining is badly broken.
Freedom of association is a fundamental human right and a deeply-held American value.
The American people agree it’s time to level the playing field for workers by making it easier to form unions.
The Employee Free Choice Act rightly leaves the choice of whether and how to form a union up to workers – not corporate executives.
It does not eliminate the “secret ballot” election. Under current law, workers can form a union through an NLRB election or, only if the employer agrees, majority sign-up. EFCA still provides for an NLRB election process, triggered when 30 percent of the workers petition for one – same as current law. But a majority of workers could opt for the less divisive majority sign-up process and the employer would not be able to veto that choice. If a majority of workers in a workplace sign cards authorizing a union, they get a union.
The Employee Free Choice Act will help rebuild our nation’s middle class and make our economy work for everyone again.
The Employee Free Choice Act will give working people the tools they need to win fair wages and treatment from corporate America. In order to have a fair, sustainable economic recovery, workers have to be able to bargain for decent wages and benefits. Workers who belong to unions earn at least 28 percent more than nonunion workers, and they are much more likely to have health care and pension benefits. In areas with high levels of unionization, even non-union workers are paid higher, more competitive wages. The bill restores workers’ freedom to improve their lives by forming unions, free from employer interference and intimidation, by stiffening penalties against employers that break the law, providing for first contract mediation and arbitration when parties are unable to agree on a first contract on their own, and giving workers the choice on how to form a union without an employer veto.
The current system for forming unions and bargaining is badly broken.
Employers routinely intimidate, harass, coerce, reassign, or even fire workers who support a union. In 26 percent of all organizing drives, the employer unlawfully fires at least one worker for union activity. Employers who break the law face no fines and treat current meager sanctions as the cost of doing business. Even when workers manage to form a union, employers continue their union-busting campaign by refusing to reach a first contract. A third of newly organized unions still don’t have a first contract after more than a year of bargaining.Majority sign-up is a tested idea.
Successful, innovative employers have allowed workers to use majority sign-up. Studies have found that coercion or pressure from both sides are reduced when workers use majority sign-up, compared to an NLRB election. Since 2003 alone, half a million workers have organized using majority sign-up at their employer.
Freedom of association is a fundamental human right and a deeply-held American value.
Every American should be able to form or join a union the same way they join a church or a political party. And CEOs should not be able to veto the majority choice of workers exercising their rights. The Employee Free Choice Act goes a long way toward guaranteeing this freedom for all workers.
The American people agree it’s time to level the playing field for workers by making it easier to form unions.
A recent Gallup poll shows that 53 percent of Americans support a law to make it easier to organize a union. A recent Hart Research poll found 73 percent of Americans support the Employee Free Choice Act after hearing the bill’s provisions.