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Campaign Promoting Employee Free Choice Act Launched Nationwide |
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If you’re in Denver for the Democratic National Convention, chances are you’ll see billboards in support of the Employee Free Choice Act. They’re part of a stepped-up public outreach campaign by workers’ advocates and the union movement to broaden support for the bill and make it a central issue in the 2008 election.
The workers’ advocacy group American Rights at Work is sponsoring ads for the legislation, including the billboards in Denver, full-page ads in Politico and USA Today, and expansive online advertising. This is a preview of a larger campaign to make the Employee Free Choice Act a reality for workers struggling in this economy. The bill would level the playing field for workers seeking to form unions.
Armed with more than a half-million signatures from the union movement’s Million Member Mobilization, activists are meeting with party leaders, state delegations and caucuses in Denver to promote the legislation. In just five months, more than 550,000 people have signed postcards to tell the new president and Congress that working families across America want them to immediately enact the legislation. We’ll present the cards to the new Congress after the November elections in a ceremony at the U.S. Capitol. (You can show your support for the Employee Free Choice Act by clicking here to sign our online card.)
American Rights at Work communicator Michael Whitney sums up why the Employee Free Choice Act is so important:
People are struggling in this country. Today’s workplaces are tilted in favor of lavishly-paid CEOs, who get golden parachutes while middle-class families struggle to get by.
The Employee Free Choice Act can restore the balance, giving more workers a chance to form unions and get better health care, job security and benefits—and an opportunity to pursue their dreams. When more workers are in unions, our economy can be strong again.
Sen. Barack Obama and his running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, have co-sponsored the bill, while Sen. John McCain voted against it.
Stewart Acuff, assistant to AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, says the Employee Free Choice Act can help restore the American Dream.
It doesn’t have to be this way. We don’t have to lose our middle class. We don’t have to leave our kids and grandkids less than what was left to us.
We are where we are because of a values deficit, misplaced priorities and bad public policy. We have to restore to America’s workers the absolute freedom to form unions and bargain collectively—to bargain for an exit ramp from poverty, to bargain for a life of dignity for their kids and a place in the American Dream, to bargain for a larger, broader, stronger middle class.
It’s going to be a tough fight. Corporate groups are desperately trying to stop the Employee Free Choice Act. In state after state, deep-pocket front groups, such as the so-called Center for Union Facts and the Employee Freedom Action Committee, are running ads that assail congressional candidates for their support of the bill. Consider this comment about the bill by U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Donohue, who was quoted in yesterday’s Minneapolis Star Tribune:
This is going to be a war, and, when it’s over, not everybody is going to be left standing. There’re no free rides on this deal.
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We’re doing what we can to participate. The article below {web source follows excerpt} is appearing in a number of Jewish community weeklies, in their “Labor Day Weekend” issue, or soon thereafter. We also have joined the petition campaign - see our website for details.
Arieh Lebowitz, Jewish Labor Committee
http://www.jewishlabor.org
Your job: Help unions strengthen labor laws
Why we’re backing the Employee Free Choice Act
by Stuart Appelbaum
In August 2006, a worker at a Rite Aid Distribution Center in Lancaster, Calif., was fired. Her name was Debbie Fontaine.
Her offense? Taking part in a campaign to organize a union. It’s an incident that might not make many of us think about our responsibilities as Jews, but this Labor Day it should.
Like her coworkers, Fontaine, 48, had a growing list of complaints against the company. But it wasn’t until they began to organize to form a union that she discovered how brutal her employer could be.
Workers supporting the union say they were spied on and threatened with the loss of …
http://www.njjewishnews.com/njjn.com/082808/opedHelpUnions.html
If people want a union, they should be able to have a union. The company they work for should not hinder anyone the right to organize and have a voice . It is unions that have protected workers, kept their pay competitive, assured medical benefits and pensions, assured the safety of the work place. It is no wonder that businesses don’t want them. They don’t want to pay for these things. What they don’t realize is that a strong union representing a company, also makes the company strong and assures their future as well.