Issue Position: Freedom to Choose a Union

Issue Position

FREEDOM TO CHOOSE A UNION

The right to form a union and engage in collective bargaining is enshrined in U.S. and international human rights laws, but for many U.S. workers it is a right that exists only on paper. More and more, workers who want to join together to form unions typically face intense employer opposition aimed at suppressing their freedom to unionize and bargain collectively. Workers, their families and the entire nation are paying a high price for the suppression of these basic freedoms. Wages have been suppressed, especially for workers on the lowest rungs of the job ladder--many of them women, minorities and immigrants. Secure guaranteed pensions and decent health care coverage common under union contracts have been denied to millions of nonunion workers who want collective bargaining but cannot have it. Disparities in income and wealth have reached levels not seen since the Great Depression, as workers blocked from access to collective bargaining lack the power to redress rising economic inequality.

Employers routinely resort to legal but coercive tactics as well as illegal ones to keep workers from forming unions. According to Cornell University's Kate Bronfenbrenner, when private-sector workers try to organize a union, 92 percent of employers force them to attend closed-door anti-union meetings and 78 percent have supervisors deliver anti-union messages to workers they oversee. Seventy-five percent hire outside consultants to run anti-union campaigns, half threaten to shut down if the union is voted in and 25 percent illegally fire workers.

Even when workers win a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election to form a union, one-third of the time their employer never negotiates a contract with them. And the penalties for all these forms of employer misconduct are so mild they do not serve as a deterrent to future misconduct.
The law giving working people the legal right to form a union through NLRB elections is so weak, in fact, it is becoming irrelevant for workers seeking to improve their lives. Instead of a workers' rights law, it has become a structure for management to pressure and intimidate workers to reject unionization.

The current system for workers to form unions is broken. It must be repaired urgently to give all working people the freedom to make their own choice about whether to form a union and bargain with management for better wages and benefits. The NLRA has always allowed workers to form unions through "majority sign-up," that is, when a majority of employees sign cards authorizing the union to bargain on their behalf with management. Since 1935 majority sign-up has been shown to reduce conflict, coercion, harassment and delay, as compared to the NLRB election process. But under current law, workers can only form a union through majority sign-up if their employer agrees to recognize the union. This makes no sense. Management should not get to dictate whether workers can use majority sign-up or whether they have to go through the NLRB election process, which typically triggers an inherently coercive anti-union campaign. Workers should be allowed to form unions through majority sign-up regardless of whether management agrees, as they did in the early years of the NLRA.

If elected, I will co-sponsor and vote for the Employee Free Choice Act (S.800/H.R. 1041), which passed the House by a vote of 241-185 on March 1, 2007 but was blocked by a Senate filibuster in June, 2007 (the Senate failed to invoke cloture by a vote of 51-48 vote). The Employee Free Choice Act, introduced by Senator Kennedy in the Senate and Representative George Miller in the House, would require employers to honor their workers' decision to join a union after a majority of them signed a union authorization card or petition; establishes first contract mediation and arbitration; and creates meaningful penalties against employers who interfere with, coerce or fire workers for attempting to join a union.

If elected, I will publicly support workers who are forming unions by reaffirming the importance of unions to our communities and by taking actions such as contacting employers and urging them to not interfere with employee free choice, issuing public statements, attending rallies supporting organizing, sponsoring public forums, etc.

If elected I will oppose a national "right to work" bill that would prohibit unionized workers and their employers from voluntarily agreeing to "union security" provisions, which allow the union to recover the costs of collective bargaining from all of the workers that federal law requires it to represent in the workplace?

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