Workers and employers of America…UNITE! For that is the most humane and effective way to increase the welfare of all. Unfortunately, the history of labor relations is such that workers too often suffer when employers have surplus power and deficient humanity.
Indeed it was that imbalance that originally led workers to unionize, a process that has lifted workplace standards for everybody. We take for granted such protections as the 40 hour workweek, paid vacations, safe workplaces, minimum wages, health care and pensions that all flow from workers uniting in a common cause.
Today, so well entrenched are those protections that many believe the unions have outlived their usefulness. Popular perception blames unions for gouging employers, forcing them to close or re-locate, or driving up prices and making them uncompetitive.
Yet nothing is further from the truth. In fact Washington is so caught in the corporate clutch that many workers are suffering anew under unscrupulous employers. And when they try to exercise their Constitutional right to organize employers are illegally harassing, threatening and firing them, escaping punishment under toothless pro-business laws and a Republican controlled regulatory apparatus where the wolves guard the henhouse.
But this could soon change when Congress passes the Employee Free Choice Act, a long overdue law that would restore balance to the relationships between employer and employee. Specifically it would let the employees determine how to vote for a new union, not the employers. Currently employers choose a process that allows them plenty of time to intimidate, threaten, fire and hold mandatory anti-union meetings.
The Act would also strengthen financial penalties for companies guilty of coercion or intimidation and require mediation and arbitration when management and a newly certified union cannot agree on a contract.
More than half of Americans workers, 60 million, say they would join a union if they could and for good reason. On average union workers earn 30 per cent more and are more than 62 per cent more likely to have health coverage than their non union counterparts, such as those in the ‘right to work for less’ states. By the way, nothing is more anti-American than so called right to work state laws that allow new employees to refuse union membership in a business where a democratic vote established that union.
Teresa Joyce was a union organizer who suffered under hostile management at ATT wireless but enjoyed a complete turnaround when Cingular took over (Cingular respected the workers union vote and freely engages in a collaborative process that benefits everyone).
In her Congressional testimony supporting the new law Mrs. Joyce noted that ‘It is outrageous and shameful that the very freedoms they (her relatives in WWII and Iraq) fight to preserve are the very freedoms that are routinely trampled on here at home. Something is terribly wrong with our laws and our country when workers are systematically harassed, threatened and even fired for the simple act of exercising their right to form a union to improve their lives.”
With the middle class rapidly shrinking, the gap between rich and poor at historic highs and a political system too long in doing the bidding for big business, it is essential to protect basic workplace freedoms for all Americans. Congress must pass the Employee Free Choice Act and, above all, Kentucky must reject ‘right to work (for less)’ legislation.
Richard F. Dawahare
Indeed it was that imbalance that originally led workers to unionize, a process that has lifted workplace standards for everybody. We take for granted such protections as the 40 hour workweek, paid vacations, safe workplaces, minimum wages, health care and pensions that all flow from workers uniting in a common cause.
Today, so well entrenched are those protections that many believe the unions have outlived their usefulness. Popular perception blames unions for gouging employers, forcing them to close or re-locate, or driving up prices and making them uncompetitive.
Yet nothing is further from the truth. In fact Washington is so caught in the corporate clutch that many workers are suffering anew under unscrupulous employers. And when they try to exercise their Constitutional right to organize employers are illegally harassing, threatening and firing them, escaping punishment under toothless pro-business laws and a Republican controlled regulatory apparatus where the wolves guard the henhouse.
But this could soon change when Congress passes the Employee Free Choice Act, a long overdue law that would restore balance to the relationships between employer and employee. Specifically it would let the employees determine how to vote for a new union, not the employers. Currently employers choose a process that allows them plenty of time to intimidate, threaten, fire and hold mandatory anti-union meetings.
The Act would also strengthen financial penalties for companies guilty of coercion or intimidation and require mediation and arbitration when management and a newly certified union cannot agree on a contract.
More than half of Americans workers, 60 million, say they would join a union if they could and for good reason. On average union workers earn 30 per cent more and are more than 62 per cent more likely to have health coverage than their non union counterparts, such as those in the ‘right to work for less’ states. By the way, nothing is more anti-American than so called right to work state laws that allow new employees to refuse union membership in a business where a democratic vote established that union.
Teresa Joyce was a union organizer who suffered under hostile management at ATT wireless but enjoyed a complete turnaround when Cingular took over (Cingular respected the workers union vote and freely engages in a collaborative process that benefits everyone).
In her Congressional testimony supporting the new law Mrs. Joyce noted that ‘It is outrageous and shameful that the very freedoms they (her relatives in WWII and Iraq) fight to preserve are the very freedoms that are routinely trampled on here at home. Something is terribly wrong with our laws and our country when workers are systematically harassed, threatened and even fired for the simple act of exercising their right to form a union to improve their lives.”
With the middle class rapidly shrinking, the gap between rich and poor at historic highs and a political system too long in doing the bidding for big business, it is essential to protect basic workplace freedoms for all Americans. Congress must pass the Employee Free Choice Act and, above all, Kentucky must reject ‘right to work (for less)’ legislation.
Richard F. Dawahare
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