Sweeping Proposal to Strengthen Right to Organize Moves to U.S. Senate

The Employee Free Choice Act, which would bolster American workers’ rights to join unions, passed the House of Representatives in March this year and is now pending in the Senate. The proposed legislation would allow the workforce to join unions based on signing cards authorizing union representation.

The law would also require binding arbitration for first contracts where the parties cannot agree and impose financial penalties on employers for firing pro-union employees.

An April 2007 study by the Campaign for America’s Future estimates that passage of the EFCA would increase union membership by 10 percent, providing an additional 3.5 million people with health insurance and nearly 2.8 million more people with pensions.

Some 60 million U.S. workers say they would join a union if they could, based on research conducted by Peter D. Hart Research Associates in December 2006.

But that same poll, taken for us at the AFL-CIO, also showed that nearly one-third of the public does not realize how hard management fights workers who seek to form unions.

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