Labor to launch three-pronged attack for right to organize By Mark Gruenberg, PAI
The Employee Free Choice Act, by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., and Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., will mandate card-check recognition of unions, increase penalties for labor law-breaking and make it easier to get court orders against labor law breakers during organizing and first contract drives.
Based on legislation introduced four years ago by the late Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., the Kennedy-Miller bill already has 31 Senate backers and 169 House backers, including a handful of Republicans, AFL-CIO Organizing Director Stewart Acuff said.
'The system to facilitate organizing is so broken that of the 400,000 workers who organized with the AFL-CIO unions' in 2002 'fewer than one-fifth went through National Labor Relations Board elections,' Sweeney said.
'Fifty years ago, more than 90 percent of all workers who organized did so through the NLRB,' he added.