Preserving workers’ rights

The article, “Bill looks to remove union roadblocks” (June 9) was wrong about the Employee Free Choice Act. The act wouldn’t change the rule on union elections. If 30 percent of the workers at workplace want to vote on union representation, they can still do so.

What the Employee Free Choice Act does is limits employers’ ability to game the system, and gives workers back their real choice on whether to have a union.

The current labor law system is broken. Half those who don’t have a union say they would join one, if given the chance, in order to improve their lives. Too few ever get the chance. Employers routinely block workers’ efforts to form unions, and labor law today is too weak to stop them.

Workers can’t have fair, democratic elections on unions when employers can force workers to attend mandatory meetings against the union, and supervisors routinely urge their employees to vote ‘no.’

According to the National Labor Relations Board, 25 percent of employers illegally fire workers for supporting a union, and employers are found guilty of firing or mistreating more than 20,000 workers every year.

The Employee Free Choice Act would enact penalties when employers run roughshod over workers’ rights. It would establish union representation at a company if a majority of the employees signed a union card.

Such majority sign-up procedures would help prevent intimidation and coercion by corporations, while ensuring the view of the majority of the workers is respected.

Don Berry, Sumner

President, Western Maine Central Labor Council