Union urges restoration of workers' rights

AFT delegates on Sunday, July 13, 2008, approved a resolution that calls for affiliates to work with the AFL-CIO on lobbying and grass-roots activity to support passage of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).

Private sector workers experience the intimidation of the anti-union campaign like no other group, said AFT vice president Candice Owley, who urged support of the EFCA resolution.

AFT vice president Candice Owley and Federation of Nurses/UFT delegate Renee Setteducato explain the difficulties of organizing in the private sector.

EFCA would restore fairness and balance by establishing stronger penalties for violation of the law when workers seek to form a union and during first-contract negotiations, and by providing mediation and arbitration for first-contract disputes. It would also allow employees to form unions by signing cards authorizing union representation.

If this law were in effect, Resurrection Health Care workers in Chicago wouldn't have spent five years trying to organize with AFSCME, Owley noted. She also encouraged delegates to sign up for the AFL-CIO's million-member mobilization for EFCA.

Renee Setteducato, a member of the Federation of Nurses/UFT, also spoke in support of the resolution.

The arbitrary assignment of nurses as "supervisors" jeopardizes their union standing, said Setteducato. Hospital management uses these assignments to "insisiously draw nurses into the world of leadership" and take them away from patient care on the floor. "It's their way of depleting our unions."

July 13, 2008