MAINE LABOR UPDATE
May 25, 2007
An Information Service of the
Maine AFL-CIO
www.maineaflcio.org 

Please Forward to Maine Working Families

FREE CHOICE ACT GAINS NATIONWIDE
Take Time to Call Maine's Senators about EFCA


FROM THE PRESIDENT'S DESK
Ed Gorham
President
Maine AFL-CIO

America isn't working the way it should for working people.

Just ask the 3,400 workers laid off from Circuit City, who were told to re-apply for their jobs for lower pay. Just ask workers at International Paper Co. who have seen their jobs shipped overseas. Just ask those struggling without health care or good job prospects.
 

Sixty million of America's workers say they would form a union tomorrow if given the chance. After all, a union card is the single best ticket to the middle class in this nation.

EFCA Gains Momentum
The momentum to pass the Employee Free Choice Act is growing by the day. Already, working families have placed more than 30,000 phone calls to members of Congress urging them to pass this important legislation. They have sent 300,000 e-mail and other communications as well. At the same time, state and local political leaders also are joining the rising tide of support for the bill.

Thirty-six state and local legislative bodies that have endorsed the act. The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Employee Free Choice Act in March. The bill, S. 1041, is now pending in the Senate. If it is enacted, the act would restore balance to the system of forming unions and bargaining.

Bangor News Backs EFCA
While the Portland Press Herald opposed EFCA, the Bangor Daily News became the fourth newspaper in the United States to support it noting that employer intimidation has tipped the "balance of power" against unions to the detriment of the average worker.

We need now to write, fax, e-mail or call Maine Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe to ask them to vote for the Employee Free Choice Act!

CONTACT: Senators Snowe and Collins
    Tell them to support the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) Note: A personal call to any one of their Maine offices is very effective - staff logs all these calls. Please ACT NOW!!

    Click here for the CONTACT PAGE for the Senators >>>>
    Click here for more info on EFCA (Editorials, articles and more)
    Click here to sign the national AFL-CIO EFCA Petition

Many Fired Illegally
Union workers earn 30 percent more than those who aren't, and are much more likely to have employer-provided health care and retirement benefits.

Yet, when employees try to exercise their rights to form unions, employers routinely block them, and labor law is helpless to stop it.

A recent study shows that one out of five activists who try to form unions is likely to be fired.

More than three-quarters of private employers require supervisors to deliver anti-union messages to the workers whose jobs and pay they control, according to research by Kate Bronfenbrenner at Cornell University.

Threaten Shutdowns
Half threaten to shut down if employees unionize. And even after workers form a union, one-third of the time employers never negotiate a contract.

Some of this is legal and some is not. The current system has such weak remedies and lax enforcement that it actually encourages employers to violate workers' rights.

The Employee Free Choice Act would level the playing field for workers and restore workers' freedom to form unions and bargain.

It would strengthen penalties for companies that coerce or intimidate employees and establish mediation and binding arbitration when the employer and workers cannot agree on a first contract. And it would enable employees to form unions when a majority signs union authorization cards.

Worker's Choice Empowered
This legislation does not outlaw the election process; workers can still have an election if they want one. However, it puts the choice of how employees form their union -- by ballot or card -- in workers' hands.

Right now, the employer -- not the workers -- gets to choose how, when and where workers form their union.

There were 31,358 cases in 2005 -- one year alone -- in which employers had to provide back pay to workers in connection with cases involving illegal firings or other discrimination against workers for exercising their federally protected labor law rights..
 

The Employee Free Choice Act would give working men and women back this basic right to self-organization and thus give them a real tool in their daily fight to stay out of the ranks of the working poor.

In Solidarity.

Ed Gorham