‘Free choice’ bill returns balance<br> to weak labor organizing system

To the editor,
Michael A. Gamboli and Michael J. Murray got it wrong in their guest column (“‘Free choice’ bill might give workers no choice,” April 30) on the Employee Free Choice Act. The current labor law system is broken. Half of people who don’t have a union say they would join one tomorrow if given the chance in order to improve their lives, but too few ever get that chance. Employers routinely block workers’ efforts to form unions, and labor law today is too weak to stop them. Twenty-five percent of employers illegally fire workers for supporting a union, and employers are found guilty of firing or mistreating more than 20,000 workers every year.
Workers can’t have fair, democratic elections on unions when employers can force workers to attend mandatory meetings against the union and direct supervisors to routinely urge their employees to vote “no.”
The Employee Free Choice Act would enact new penalties when employers roll roughshod over workers’ rights. It would establish union representation at a company if a majority of the employees signed a union card. Such majority sign-up procedures would help prevent intimidation and coercion by corporations, while ensuring the view of the majority of the workers is respected.
The Employee Free Choice Act wouldn’t change the rule on union elections – at any time, if 30 percent of the workers at a workplace want to vote on union representation, they can still do so. However, the Employee Free Choice Act limits employers’ ability to game the system, and gives workers back their real choice on whether to have a union.

George Nee,Secretary-Treasurer, Rhode Island AFL-CIO

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