Maine Owl

Get your Solidarity News everywhere now


Published by Food AND Medicine: The current issue (Spring 2009) contains a large special section on the EMPLOYEE FREE CHOICE ACT (EFCA)

A pro-EFCA rally was held Wednesday at the Worker Center in Brewer. The Bangor Daily News ran a "balanced" story yesterday:

A group of about 20 held a rally Wednesday morning at Food AND Medicine in Brewer, an organization that formed in 2002 to assist laid-off workers with food, medicine and other necessities. Jack McKay, director of Food AND Medicine and the Eastern Maine Labor Council, called the event a success if for no other reason than it keeps the debate going.

"We're committed to workers' rights, and we think this idea has significant support in Washington," he said.

Supporters claim that the EFCA would, among other things, allow workers to choose a union without fear of employer coercion or intimidation. U.S. Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., and U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, introduced the bill this week as a means to make it easier for workers to bargain with their employers for better wages and health care. If passed, the law would make the most substantive changes to U.S. labor laws since 1935.

That last paragraph could have been written a lot better. Supporters don't just "claim" the Act would do things to help labor organizing, it would do such things, including force employers to bargain in good faith.

EFCA not just about "secret ballot"
A succinct explanation of how this revision of labor law would help the economy was offered by former Labor Secretary Robert Reich on the public radio Marketplace program this week:

Reich: ... employees who want to form unions are threatened by their employers. And if they don't heed the warnings, they're fired, even though that's illegal. I saw this behavior when I was secretary of Labor over a decade ago. We tried to penalize employers that broke the law, but the fines are minuscule. Too many employers consider them a cost of doing business. The most important feature of the Employee Free Choice Act toughens penalties against companies that violate their workers' rights.

Judging by comments under the BDN story above, I'm afraid to say that there are a lot of people running around out there with deep misconceptions about unions, no understanding of barriers to organizing in law that mercilessly are used by management against them, and the actual content of EFCA itself. There is a lot of work left to do by Labor if we want to generate enough pressure to get EFCA passed.

See also FMI: Turn Maine Blue has many excellent items on EFCA.