EFCA
I've been watching the progress of EFCA (Employee Free Choice Act).
http://www.changetowin.org/
Tula Connell noted in her post on FiredogLake.
Some 60 million workers say they would join a union if they could—but our labor laws, dating back to the 1930s, are skewed in favor of corporate giants who spend big bucks to harass and intimidate workers. And it works—after all, how many people want to lose their jobs? (Although it’s illegal to fire workers for forming unions, management does it anyway, counting on the fact that it often takes years for a worker’s appeal to wind its way through the regional and national labor boards and even the courts.)
I’m one of these workers.
When I was a card carrying member of the SEIU and a sister in the Teamsters, I felt like I had a voice. As an exempted employee in federal service, I am frustrated by the constant talk about unions from anti-union management, but even more so by my fellow exempted employees.
Yesterday, I had a discussion about libraries and being in a union with someone about to graduate from a Master’s program in Library Science. She had an opportunity to take a Library Information job at a unionized library that paid well, was where she wanted to be and also in a university setting. It was ideal, almost. It was unionized.
So, despite the facility and area being perfect for her, she decided based on the advice of a mentor to not take the job. Why, you might ask, well, because unions stifle opportunities for innovation. Well, according to her.
Innovation.
Where do people who have never been a member of a union come to the idea that unions prevent innovation?
I’ve been a member of 2 unions, encouraged a friend to join another and grew up in two others. In my experiences with these 5 unions, never once did the union step in to halt progress, they encouraged it. Union members can be and often are partners in innovation. What unions provide to workers and management is the option to work together as a group to ensure workers are treated and paid fairly and that the business is sustainable. There is no union out there with a mission of running a business into the ground. How would a non-existent company ever help a union? Honestly, it simply doesn’t make any sense.
Like all things in life. It’s all about choices. It’s every members choice to make their locals innovative and to bring it all together for management and ownership in the companies they work for. Workers and owners are not on two different sides of this issue, they are partners. It’s time for owners and managers to see opportunities for innovation in conjunction with union members.
EFCA will likely come up this coming week.
Call your Senators and remind them that as workers, you deserve the opportunity to be in a union.
EFCA gives all of us the opportunity to be innovative by bringing the right to join your co-workers in working with management to make all of our work more efficient, profitable or simply better. Management working with union members can do anything.
If you live in Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania or Virginia, dial: 1-800-774-8941.
It also is important to thank senators who have co-sponsored the Employee Free Choice Act. Click here to see the list of co-sponsors of the Employee Free Choice Act and dial: 1-800-718-1008.
