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Senator Sanders explains why the Employee Free Choice Act is so needed. As a former union organizer I can confirm that.
In my 20's I worked as a union organizer for the Hotel, Motel and Restaurant Workers Union in Detroit and saw, first hand, the difficulties of unionizing restaurant workers through the National Labor Relations Board's secret election process. An example: from the time that a majority of workers in one restaurant signed union cards indicating that they wanted a union, it was months until the date of the NLRB's scheduled election. During the intervening time, the employer threatened the workers, illegally, with getting fired if a union came in and actually fired two workers for advocating the union.
At that time, in fast food restaurants, the turn-over of employees was routinely very quick, so some union supporters left the restaurant for personal reasons, while new hires were often scared, just because they were new, to support the union. Naturally, complaints were filed with the NLRB arising from the firing of the two workers, but it took months until those complaints were heard and months more before they were decided in favor of the workers. In the meantime, of course, those workers had gotten other jobs and were not interested in returning to the scene of the original crimes.
The Employees Free Choice Act would allow workers who desire a union to sign union cards. When a majority of workers in a unit sign for the union, the workers could either request an NLRB conducted secret election or require that the employer bargain with the workers through their new union based on the card majority rather than an election. The new law does not take away the workers' right to request a secret ballot, as many Republican politicians and organizations are falsely claiming. They oppose unionization because they want to keep wages and benefits as low as possible, not because they care about workers' rights.
Union were the motive force in creating the U.S.'s relatively well off middle class, but in the last 30 years the number of union members has been decreasing steadily and with that so have the wages and benefits for all workers. Unionization lifts wages for all the workers in an industry, whether they are unionized themselves or not.
Productivity has increased greatly in the last 10 years, but the workers have not benefited from that increase. The increased profits have gone to top management -- that's where the multi-million dollars for the CEO's come from. The real wages of the average worker have decreased by more than a average of $2000 a year since Bush-Cheney came to power. The only way to insure that workers get the money and benefits they deserve -- along with protection against unsafe working conditions and arbitrary firing -- is to allow them to quickly and easily join a union. The EFCA accomplishes that.
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