Fighting for Unions

by Stewart Acuff

Some 57 million nonunion workers in the United States
say they would form a union tomorrow if given the
chance, according to new poll conducted in February by
Peter D. Hart and Associates. For many of them,
especially women and people of color, having a union is
often the difference between living in or out of
poverty. Yet the truth is that a sophisticated and
systematic effort to deny workers their basic freedom
of association is rampant in this country.

Employers and antiunion consultants have effectively
thwarted the intent and efficacy of the law that
supposedly guarantees workers the freedom to form
unions, a human right protected by the 1948 Universal
Declaration of Human Rights and recognized by the US
government thirteen years earlier in the National Labor
Relations Act.

To put it in perspective: More than 20,000 US workers
were fired or discriminated against for union
activities, according to a National Labor Relations
Board annual report. That amounts to a worker in this
country being fired or discriminated against every
twenty-six minutes for exercising the basic human right
to form or join a union. Most employers infringe on
workers’ freedom to make their own decisions—routinely
using legal and illegal tactics to thwart their
efforts—according to Cornell University researcher
Kate Bronfenbrenner. Fully one-quarter of private-
sector employers illegally fire workers. And even after
workers jump through all the hoops under current law
and win recognition for their union, employers refuse
to agree to initial collective bargaining contracts
nearly half the time. This is a moral outrage.

Simply put: Our labor laws are so weak that employers
routinely get away with breaking them, and when they
are punished the penalties are insufficient to deter
other unscrupulous employers from breaking the law.
Right now the only penalty for most violations of the
rights of workers to form unions is that the company
must post a notice stating that it violated the law.
Sometimes it takes several years before that happens,
long after the effort to form a union has ended. The
delay-prone and contentious NLRB election process is so
unfairly skewed in employers’ favor that the vast
majority of workers decide to opt out of the process
and use a majority-sign-up agreement, often called a
card check, instead.

In November 2003 lawmakers introduced the Employee Free
Choice Act. Under this legislation, when a majority of
employees in a workplace sign cards declaring their
desire to form a union, their employer is required to
recognize their union. The act also toughens the
penalties for violations of employee rights during
organizing drives and contract disputes. In an effort
led by workers, their unions and allies, 210 members of
the House of Representatives signed on to the act (less
than eight shy of a majority), as did thirty-eight
members of the Senate. The Employee Free Choice Act
will be reintroduced as bipartisan legislation this
month. Initially, our goal is to re-sign the vast
majority of co-sponsors from last session, and by the
end of the year we hope to secure majority support in
the House and a larger plurality in the Senate.

Building support for the act is a critical battle, and
we must show both parties that our effort and outrage
will not subside until this bill becomes law. Scores of
victimized workers will tell their experience firsthand
to their elected leaders. In addition, the labor
movement must educate and involve thousands of union
activists and staff—and 100,000 rank-and-file union
members in strategic areas. Working closely with
allies, we must expand our base of support within the
religious community and create vehicles for religious
groups to include this effort in their work.

The labor movement, while still debating the direction
of the AFL-CIO, agrees almost unanimously that the
freedom to form unions is the central issue at the
heart of our work over the next four years.
Progressives outside the labor movement have to own
this fight as well. Frankly, I can’t think of a single
more significant thing we can do together in this
climate. Every effort to frustrate workers trying to
exercise their fundamental human right to have a union
must be addressed and treated as the moral catastrophe
it is. The whole community needs to be aware of
employer interference in organizing, leading to a
groundswell of moral outrage that inspires people to
agitate and disrupt business as usual.

In addition, the labor movement needs to provide
leadership that allows and fosters the mass movement of
workers to change the climate for organizing. The fact
is that ultimately, rank-and-file workers’ willingness
or unwillingness to fight for this issue will determine
what happens to us. That is why it is critical that
anything we do to reform the AFL-CIO must include an
expansion of the role of mobilizing workers as its
central component.

This is a fight that goes on until we win, because
allowing workers to freely form unions is an essential
step toward restoring balance to our economic system,
lifting people from poverty, strengthening democratic
participation and insuring corporate accountability. We
must wage this fight because it is the right thing to
do and because history will judge our action at this
incredibly decisive moment.

[Stewart Acuff is the AFL-CIO’s national organizing
director. This article is adapted from remarks
delivered in Wisconsin on February 11, 2005.]

The Nation - from the April 18, 2005 issue

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http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050418&s=acuff