US workers need 'Free Choice'

US workers need 'Free Choice'

The United States Employee Free Choice Act

Until recently Theresa Gares was a school bus driver in New Jersey. Her conditions of employment were basic: no paid sick leave; no paid holidays; and her employer-provided health benefits were so poor that despite paying hundreds of dollars a month for coverage, Theresa and her fellow workers were often left with large medical bills.

Faced with this appalling set of circumstances, Theresa did what many workers around the world do and take for granted - she joined a union and started to organise, quickly signing up the majority of her colleagues into membership. So far, so normal, but this is the point were Theresa's story takes a turn for the worse. According to the TUC's sister organisation in the US, the AFL-CIO, soon after Theresa and her colleagues joined the union, '...management began holding weekly meetings to discourage them from joining'. Gares herself was called into the office one day after dropping off her bus and, 'told she was fired for insubordination. A few days later another member of the organizing committee also was fired.' Theresa now finds herself out of work, with no income and no health benefits.

The sad fact is that Theresa's story is not exceptional. A study by US Academic Kate Bronfenbrenner has revealed that nine out of ten US private-sector employers force employees who want to join a union to attend closed-door meetings to hear anti-union propaganda and eight in ten require supervisors to attend training sessions on attacking unions. In a quarter of private sector union campaigns workers are fired illegally because they want a union, and seventy five per cent of US employers use consultants to run anti-union campaigns. These statistics help explain why US union density has declined to 13 per cent of the workforce (less than half of that in the UK), falling to 8 per cent in the private sector. This is despite the fact that some 60 million US workers - half the workforce - say they would join a union if they had the opportunity to do.

This is why unions in the US are working so hard to pass the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) - an incredibly important piece of legislation, which if passed would make it far easier for US workers to join unions, and far more costly for US employers to engage in anti-union activity. President Obama was a sponsor of the Employee Free Choice Act when he was in the Senate and continues to strongly support the bill, which is currently being considered by the US Senate. As I write the American labor movement is mounting an unprecedented legislative mobilisation to garner the 60 votes required to get past a Republican filibuster in the Senate.

Defeat of the bill is not an option as it will also have negative repercussions far beyond the US. Already we have seen signs that US anti-union consultants are intent on opening up a new market in the UK - with employers as diverse as Amazon, T-Mobile and Kettlechips engaging US-based anti-union consultants in recent years. This is why the TUC and the AFL-CIO joined forces last year to agree a joint protocol on 'busting the union busters' and why we are working hard to support US unions in their efforts to pass the Employee Free Choice Act.

The Employee Free Choice Act is not a silver bullet or magic wand. If passed US unions will still hard face the hard job of getting out and 'organising the unorganised'. But the TUC believes the Employee Free Choice Act is an essential building block for a building a fairer America - one where workers can exercise their fundamental rights to join a union and organise, and unions can represent their members without fear of intimidation or harassment.

Help us to help the AFL-CIO and show your support for the Employee Free Choice Act by spreading awareness of the campaign among fellow trade unionists, co-workers and friends; checking if your employer operates in the USA (and if so, asking your union to raise the bill with the employer at national level); and asking your MP to sign Early Day Motion 1896 on 'Union rights in the US.'

(http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=39118&SESSION=899).