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House passage of EFCA is ‘momentous turning point’ (3/1)

Statement by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney on House Passage of the Employee Free Choice Act March 1, 2007 Today’s vote on the Employee Free Choice Act in the House of Representatives marks a momentous turning point in the growing movement to restore our nation's middle-class. Today, the voices of tens of millions of working people who deserve the right to make a free choice to bargain for a better life have been heard and heeded on Capitol Hill. These are people like Shirley Brown, a housekeeper at Chicago’s Resurrection Health Care whose co-workers are afraid to talk about forming a union - even outside of work - for fear of losing their jobs. They are people like Ivo Camilo, a 35-year employee of Blue Diamond Growers in Sacramento, who came to Washington to tell of the fear instilled in his co-workers when he was fired for exercising his rights. And they are people like Bill Lawhorn, who came to tell of being fired by Consolidated Biscuit in McComb, Ohio for supporting a union - and despite winning his government case against his employer, four and a half years after being fired he has not been rehired or received a cent of back pay. Today those workers and millions like them have new hope that they will have the opportunity to bargain collectively for better wages, benefits and working conditions. Because of today’s vote, the future looks a little brighter to all Americans who have watched corporations celebrate record profits, but have themselves been shut out of the party, left with stagnant wages and facing soaring costs. A union card is the single best ticket into the middle-class and, thanks to the Employee Free Choice Act, working people may finally have the chance to be part of a union. Labor law was intended from the outset to encourage working people to come together and bargain collectively for better wages and benefits than they would be able to get on their own. But in the past few decades, labor law has been so twisted by corporations and their union-busting hired guns that it is now virtually impossible to form a union against an employer’s wishes. The choice that should belong to employees now belongs to employers. Corporations routinely fire, intimidate, harass and coerce workers during organizing campaigns, and labor law is helpless to stop them. The current process is rigged from the outset by the side that holds the power of the paycheck. The changes made in the Employee Free Choice Act are not radical. It gives workers - not corporations - the right to decide how to vote for a union. It makes it harder for employers to interfere and levies real penalties on those that do. Finally, it creates a mechanism to ensure that corporations can't endlessly stall a first contract. For too long, it has taken heroes to form unions -- brave men and women like Shirley Brown, Ivo Camilo and Bill Lawhorn. If we are going to have an economy and a country that work for working people, that has to change. Today is the beginning of the change we need to see. ###