 Salvador Sanchez, Political Science instructor at several Los Angeles area colleges, participated with his students in a 10-mile EFCA march in the rain on February 5. Our students need this law
Why we should care about the Employee Free Choice Act
Why should we care that pro-labor members of congress are poised to introduce the Employee Free Choice Act, and that employer groups are fighting it as if it signals “the demise of a civilization” (actual words of Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus)? What does reform of private sector labor law have to do with public education?
The Employee Free Choice Act would allow workers to replace outdated National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) election procedures stacked in favor of employers with a fair democratic process, and provide stiffer penalties for rampant employer lawbreaking. It would also bring in a neutral arbiter to impose a first contract if the employer stalls for three months. The Employee Free Choice Act would be the first major revision of national labor law in forty years, and the first pro-worker reforms since the NLRA was passed in 1935.
Congress passed the NLRA in a time of enormous, sometimes violent, struggles between labor and capital, and thereby established rules of the game for workplace conflict resolution. It provided for a government board (the NLRB) to oversee democratic procedures through which workers could determine for themselves how their collective economic interests might be met. These provisions for forming a union, gaining recognition from the employer, and negotiating a contract allowed, but did not mandate, a secret ballot election to choose the union.
Times have changed. The NLRB-administered secret ballot election process has been compromised and corrupted by anti-worker court decisions and illegal but common employer practices. The biggest problem boils down to this: the NLRA assumed workers had the right to determine for themselves whether they wanted a union. The courts have obliterated this assumption, giving the employer the right to massively interfere in the election process. The Employee Free Choice Act would restore the presumption that workers have the democratic right to form a union without interference.
Deceptive PR campaign
Employers view this prospect with alarm. The Chamber of Commerce, Madison Avenue firms, and the anti-union legal industry are behind an expensive, hyperbolic and deceptive public relations campaign against the Act. Their ads, op-eds and talking heads are deeply, deeply worried that if the Employee Free Choice becomes law, workers would lose "their right to vote on the job." Say, does that mean you are for workers voting on what products to produce, or what services to offer the public, or what time to come into work, or how big a raise to give the CEO? Oh. Just kidding.
Setting aside the ludicrous idea that the Chamber of Commerce has ever cared about worker rights, their argument is also factually wrong. The Employee Free Choice Act would allow workers to form a union by the simple, expeditious and democratic method of "majority sign up"—if fifty per cent plus one sign cards, they have a union. And if they prefer, they can still ask for a secret ballot election. But the employer can't.
Between twenty and thirty thousand workers are harassed, disciplined, or fired yearly for union-related activities that are legal under the NLRA. But the penalties for employer lawbreaking are so slight and take so long employers consider them part of the cost of doing business.
Two years ago one of my students at San Francisco City College, a young musician who had a day job at a national camera supply chain store, was fired for talking with a coworker about forming a union to deal with the employer about consistent undercounting of their hours worked. From taking my class in California labor history, my student knew it was illegal to be fired for his conversation, but he needed to work, and didn’t have time between work, school, and his music to go talk with a lawyer. He found a new job that paid less, but enough to get by.
Polls consistently show that the majority of non-union workers would join a union if they were not afraid of losing their job in the process. The Employee Free Choice Act would fix the broken NLRA system, restore a measure of fairness to the American workplace, and give our students a greater likelihood their work in school will convert to a decent living with dignity when they get a job. Its time has come.
By Fred Glass
CFT Communications Director
San Francisco Community College Board of Trustees officially endorses the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act of 2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Friday, March 27, 2009
San Francisco – The San Francisco Community College District’s Board of
Trustees, at the urging of AFT local 2121, has endorsed the Employee Free Choice
Act of 2009 (EFCA). The EFCA would allow workers, not employers, the choice
of either majority signup or a secret ballot election, and would greatly increase
employer penalties for violating workers’ rights in union organizing campaigns.
For example, The Act authorizes trebling back pay for workers illegally fired for
supporting union representation.
The resolution was heard last night at the SFCCD board of trustees meeting.
Ed Murray, Vice President of AFT Local 2121 and a longtime faculty member said
“City College of San Francisco, where the vast majority of workers enjoy union
representation, and has a positive working environment along with decent wages
and benefits, is one of the great educational institutions in our country because of
the strength of its workforce and the respect that unionized workers share with all
other constituent groups at the college.”
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