This weekend most of us are taking a break from our busy lives to spend some well deserved time with family and friends. In Brewer, we are hosting the 9th annual Solidarity Celebration, hosted by the Eastern Maine Labor Council and Food AND Medicine.
We’re proud of the principles that our country was founded on — the principles that working families have fought and died for since the Battle of Lexington to the present. In celebrating, we seek to honor those sacrifices.
Honoring our history isn’t enough though. It’s our duty to make sure that our principles are acted on and reflected in our society. The decline in working people’s wages relative to their productivity during the last 30 years speaks to a part of our society that does not echo our principles: the American workplace.
Under the current system, too often management-labor cooperation has been interpreted as “do as you are told.” The idea that a workplace should be democratic has been shunned by the notion that CEOs are entitled to do as they please. When you clock in, you leave your right to the freedom of speech, the freedom of association, even the freedom from search and seizure at the door. If you don’t have the protection of a contract, you are an at-will employee, which means you can be fired for virtually any reason — or even for no reason at all.
Workplace democracy isn’t revolutionary. It isn’t anti-business. It is commonsense. Workers are entitled to have a say on the job, and the most common means of doing that is through unions.
Unfortunately the vast majority of working Americans are denied the right to choose a union through a combination of management intimidation and broken labor law. According to polling, 60 million people would choose to form a union today if they could. The Worker Center of Eastern Maine conducted two surveys of 200 people in April and May and found that approximately 50 percent of them wanted to organize a union. A study conducted by Dr. Kate Bronfenbrenner at Cornell University found that in one-third of private sector organizing campaigns a worker was fired. That’s all it takes, firing one worker to stop any hope workers may have had for having a voice on the job.
That’s why we need to pass the Employee Free Choice Act. The act allows workers to decide how they will form a union: through a majority sign up or a traditional election.
The act also provides real penalties for the violation of existing labor law, so corporations can’t get away with harassing and firing workers when they try to form a union. It also creates an incentive for good faith bargaining during first contract negotiations by allowing any party to request independent arbitration after 90 days of contract negotiation.
The opposition is peddling the lie that the Employee Free Choice Act “takes away the secret ballot.” It doesn’t take away a worker’s right to a secret ballot; it gives workers a choice in how they form a union.
Currently companies are allowed to demand an election even after a majority of workers have voted to form a union by signing cards. Companies are then able to terrorize workers with the aid of “union-avoidance” firms into voting against forming a union. It’s so bad that Human Rights Watch issued a report in 2000 called “Unfair Advantage” that states, “Legal obstacles tilt the playing field so steeply against workers’ freedom of association that the United States is in violation of international human rights standards for workers.”
The idea of workplace democracy isn’t just an abstract ideal founded on good feelings. It is common sense, because when workers can negotiate a decent wage society is better off. According to government statistics, workers with union representation are 52 percent more likely to receive health care at work, they are far more likely to have pensions and they earn 30 percent more on average than those without a union.
Our economy wouldn’t be in the shape it is if people had the ability to make ends meet without borrowing. What’s more, the only way we will rebuild this economy is through good paying jobs, so that workers can buy the goods they produce.
Let’s invest in a stronger economy by protecting the rights of working people. Let’s make sure that our society reflects our values and not Wall Street’s. On this 4th of July, take a moment to call your senators and urge them to promote workplace democracy and support the Employee Free Choice Act.
Jack McKay is president of the Eastern Maine Labor Council. The community is invited to the Solidarity Celebration, which begins at 6 p.m. today at the council’s headquarters at 20 Ivers St. in Brewer. For more information go to www.foodandmedicine.org or call 989-5860.