AUGUSTA – It’s illegal to prevent employees from forming unions, but employers still find ways to keep workers from organizing, the head of the Maine AFL-CIO said Friday.

Members of the organization delivered more than 6,000 postcards Friday to the Augusta offices of U.S. Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, urging their support for the Employee Free Choice Act.

The act would stiffen penalties against employers who violate the law, and seeks to restore balance to the practice of forming unions by placing the option in the hands of the workers – not the employers.

“When employees try to exercise their rights to form unions, employers routinely block them, and labor law is helpless to stop it,” Edward Gorham, president of Maine’s AFL-CIO, said in a news release. “A recent study shows that one out of five activists who try to form unions is likely to be illegally fired.”

The act passed by a large margin in the U.S. House, and now is headed to the Senate. The bill was co-sponsored by U.S. Reps. Tom Allen and Michael Michaud, both Democrats of Maine.

A provision in the bill – not allowing for secret balloting – has sparked concern, however.

Kathleen Newman, president of the Associated Builders and Contractors of Maine, said under the bill, if workers formed a union and took action, their vote would be accessible to everyone – including employers.

It’s this provision that’s preventing Collins from supporting the legislation.

“I am concerned that this legislation could deprive employees of their long-standing right to decide by secret ballot whether or not to be represented by a union by allowing the union to sidestep the current election process by gathering a certain number of authorization cards,” Collins said in a statement. “Just as our elected officials are elected by secret ballot, I strongly believe employees should have that same right when it comes to determining union representation.”

Officials from New Balance, a New England shoe company, said that private ballots are the most common way in deciding to unionize.

“This legislation takes privacy, power and voice away from America’s working people, and replaces it with a scheme called card check that invites coercion and abuse into the democratic process,” James Davis, CEO of New Balance, wrote in a letter to Collins.

A call to Snowe’s Washington office, inquiring about her position on the act, was not returned Friday.

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