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Workers’ Freedom to Choose: A ‘Matter of Basic Civil Rights’ |
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| Dan Luevano | |
Restoring the freedom of workers to form unions “is a matter of basic civil rights, a priority for our nation and an imperative for our movement,” according to a new report released yesterday.
The report, Let All Voices Be Heard: Restoring the Rights of Workers to Form Unions, by the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), says the systematic, often brutal, denial of the right of America’s workers to form a union is “one piece of an overall roll-back of civil and workers’ rights over the past quarter century.”
As Wade Henderson, president of LCCR, told a briefing for Senate staff on the Employee Free Choice Act yesterday:
The same workers that our earliest civil rights laws were designed to protect—women and people of color, are those who stand to gain the most from being in a union.
Because our workplace protections are fragmented and incomplete, union representation provides disadvantaged workers—disproportionately women, minorities and people with disabilities—with workplace tools to help them achieve equal opportunity and economic equality.
The assault on the rights of workers and the decline of the union movement make it harder to obtain public policies that benefit working people.
The U.S. House passed the Employee Free Choice Act on March 1. The bill, S. 1041, is now in the Senate.
Dan Luevano knows how valuable the Employee Free Choice Act could be for workers. He told the Senate staff he worked for 10 years as an electrician for Ries Electric in Keenesburg, Colo. For six years, he and his co-workers did not receive a raise. Health care coverage was expensive and he could not afford to cover his entire family.
My daughter plays volleyball. I couldn’t enjoy her games because I was always afraid she would hurt herself.
When Luevano and his co-workers tried to form a union with the Electrical Workers by signing union authorization cards, the boss refused to accept them. If the Employee Free Choice Act had been enacted, the employer would have had to recognize the workers’ choice of a union if a majority signs union authorization cards (also known as majority sign-up). Currently, employers can reject the workers’ cards and demand a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election in which the bosses hold all the cards.
The owner summoned Luevano and his co-workers to interrogate them about union activity. Luevano says his boss yelled at him and threatened to fire everyone in the shop. That was on a Friday. On Monday, Luevano was fired. Although he got his job back, the anti-union harassment continued.
The union filed charges and I won reinstatement to my job, but when I came back, I was treated poorly. I was sent out on jobs without an apprentice and was not given much work. For a month, I worked at only 15 hours a week. I had to sell my coin collection, which I’d gotten from my father and had hoped to pass on to my son.
When the time to vote finally came, the result was a tie. Since the law requires the union to get a majority, the workers were denied their choice of a union.
Luevano’s story and thousands like it show that employer interference in what should be a workers’ choice is “off the charts,” says Mary Beth Maxwell, executive director of American Rights at Work, which sponsored the briefing.
There is a problem of [employer] lawlessness in the workplace. If people were not interested in unions, you wouldn’t need to fire them.
Today’s worker protection laws are outdated and meaningless, Maxwell says. Congress must pass the Employee Free Choice Act to update the laws and restore fairness to the workplace, she says.
As Luevano says:
I hope we can pass the Employee Free Choice Act so no one has to go through what my co-workers and I went through at Ries Electric. Every one should have the free choice to form a union and to better their lives.
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