Byron Williams: Act would make American workers too big to fail

[Earth Bound Misfit]

http://www.insidebayarea.com/opinion/ci_11890591


IN THESE UNPREDICTABLE economic times, it is common to hear the bipartisan mantra that some corporations or industries are "too big to fail." Seldom do we hear these words about the American worker.

In the failure to include the American worker into this premium category, are we are doing ourselves a disservice?

To this end, there are several pieces of legislation introduced this week in Congress, along with a bipartisan coalition of co-sponsors known as the "Employee Free Choice Act."

The bill is designed to enable working people to bargain for better benefits, wages and working conditions by restoring workers' freedom to choose for themselves whether to join a union.

This is undoubtedly important labor legislation. I've received calls urging me to look at this bill from as far as Washington, D.C. as well as from local representatives in Oakland.

If passed, the Employee Free Choice Act would:

Remove current obstacles to employees who want collective bargaining.

Guarantee that workers who can choose collective bargaining are able to achieve a contract.

Allow employees to form unions by signing cards authorizing union representation.

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The public perception may be the proposed legislation is already law, but over the past two-plus decades, there has been a systematic attempt to reduce the influence of organized labor in the American marketplace.

According to a study conducted by Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of Labor Education Research at Cornell University:

Ninety-two percent of private-sector employers, when faced with employees who want to join together in a union, force employees to attend closed-door meetings to hear anti-union rhetoric.

Eighty percent require supervisors to attend training sessions on attacking unions.

Seventy-eight percent require that supervisors deliver anti-union messages to workers they oversee.

Seventy-five percent hire outside consultants to run anti-union campaigns.

Half of employers threaten to shut down partially or totally if employees join together in a union.

The current U.S. labor laws do not prohibit the harassment, coercion and intimidation outlined in Bronfenbrenner's study.

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The decline of labor began in the early 1980s when corporations made the argument that they would inherently do the right the thing, so they told workers there's no need to organize.

Beth Schulman, author of "The Betrayal of Work: How Low-Wage Jobs Fail 30 Million Americans" and board member of the American Rights at Work calls this phenomenon the "deregulation of the labor market."

"Working people getting into middle class doesn't come down from the sky; it requires a strong labor movement and progressive legislation," she said.

If America is indeed a consumer driven economy, by what other means can the myriad individuals who work in the hotel and nursing home industries, provide janitorial services and retail industry, as well as other low-wage service jobs, which are an increasingly important segment of the economy, participate lest they be organized? And they can only organize if given a free choice.

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