It’s time for Congress to pass the Employee Free Choice Act. It’s time the economy worked for everyone.
In a study released this week, Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, documents this in detail — including the increase in corporate tactics to interfere with, block and delay workers’ attempts to form unions, and the ineffectiveness of current labor law to protect and enforce workers’ rights in the election process.
The study, “No Holds Barred: The Intensification of Employer Opposition to Organizing,” examines more than 1,000 union-representation campaigns and finds that “intense and aggressive” tactics to block workers’ freedom to form unions are becoming more commonplace.
At a town meeting in New Mexico, President Barack Obama said, “One of the things that I believe in, and if you look at our history I think it bears this out, even if you’re not a member of a union, you owe something to unions. A lot of the things that you take for granted as an employee of a company, the idea of overtime and minimum wage and benefits, a whole host of things that you, even if you’re not a member of a union, now take for granted, that happened because unions fought and helped to make employers more accountable.”
It wasn’t just rhetoric. He put his statement in the context of the current struggle to enact the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier for workers to form unions.
There’s no question that labor law reform is needed.
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Click here to read the column on this topic by John Nichols published May 21, 2009, by The Capital Times.
Posted May 21, 2009