Just across the street from where the U.S. Senate will vote soon on the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), thousands of union members and their allies gathered for a lively rally on June 19 to urge the Senate to pass the important legislation. Despite the oppressive heat, a colorful crowd of union members clad in their own respective union t-shirts-including a large contingent in AFT blue-heard from a parade of elected officials (including three Democratic presidential candidates), union leaders, representatives from civil rights and other progressive groups, and workers struggling to form unions.

AFL-CIO president John Sweeney called EFCA "the most important legislation helping workers economically in many, many years." Eight U.S. senators and two representatives addressed the crowd. Like many of the speakers, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) said a revitalized labor movement is essential to rebuilding the American middle class. "We need to restore a level playing field for unions and give them a meaningful opportunity to organize for better wages, stronger benefits and safer working conditions," she said. Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), the bill's main sponsor in the senate, began his remarks by tearing up an anti-union, anti-EFCA newspaper ad that appeared in the day's newspaper. "Workers are not asking for much," Kennedy said-decent wages, safe working conditions, and adequate health care and retirement benefits.

(Other members of Congress who spoke at the rally were Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), majority leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Joe Biden (D-Del.) and Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio). A number of union presidents spoke in addition to leaders from the Campaign for America's Future, U.S. Action, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, and American Rights at Work.)

EFCA passed in the House of Representatives earlier this year with strong bipartisan support.  Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), lead sponsor of the House bill, characterized the legislation with a simple phrase: "If the majority of workers say they want a union, they get a union." "We're fed up with the idea that workers shouldn't have a voice at work," he said.

EFCA would do three main things: permit a union to be certified if a majority of employees sign union authorization cards, provide for mediation and arbitration for first-contract disputes, and increase penalties for violations of employee rights.

While a slim majority of the Senate is on record supporting EFCA, it will be a struggle to attract the 60 votes needed to avoid a filibuster in that chamber. The June 19 rally in Washington was just one of more than 70 events around the country this week, in addition to efforts that have generated tens of thousands of phone calls, e-mails and faxes to senators. Following the rally, boxes containing 120,000 postcards from union members around the country were delivered to the Senate.

All the speakers promised that the fight to overhaul labor laws will not end, even if the legislation fails to move through the Senate. "The choice for senators is clear," Sweeney said. "Do you want to help us make history, or do you want to become history?"

The rally also featured workers who told of their own struggles, often in the face of vicious employer anti-union campaigns, to gain a voice on the job. Lee Mabry, who attempted for form a union with his co-workers at Chef Solutions in Connecticut, told of dangerous working conditions, a company that fired and intimidated union supporters, and a long election process that has left the workers without a union years after a majority signed authorization cards. "Now more than ever," Mabry said, "we need Congress to pass the Employee Free Choice Act to protect our rights to form a union so that we can improve our working conditions."

In a letter to members of the Senate urging support of EFCA, AFT president Edward J. McElroy told a similar story of employer harassment and reprisal against nurses and healthcare workers attempting to form a union at Christ Hospital in New Jersey. "Clearly, the existing law was inadequate in protecting these nurses from very real threats that most workers would be unwilling or unable to stand up against," McElroy wrote. [Dan Gursky]

June 20, 2007