Well, I’ve just returned from Capitol Hill, where today saw the Employee Free Choice Act introduced in both houses of Congress. Here’s our statement on the introduction.

I spent the morning in a hearing room in the Dirksen Senate Office Building at a hearing held by the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee to investigate the potential of Employee Free Choice to rebuild the middle class.

I made sure to take my camera with me, so here’s some pictures:

(The committee has video of the hearing available, if you want to watch the whole thing.)

Among the witnesses called before the committee to testify were Dr. Paula Voos of Rutgers University, who presented her research on the central role of unionization in restoring the middle class; Wade Henderson, President and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, who spoke of how a thriving labor movement is a powerful engine for defending the rights of all workers (especially those who historically have been discriminated against, like women and minorities); and Rev. Jim Wallis, President and Executive Director of Sojourners, who testified about how a society that cares about social justice should care about empowering its workers.

The most moving testimony, though, came from regular working people who came to Washington to share their experiences with the committee. Deb Kelly, an apprentice electrical linesperson and IBEW member from Anchorage, Alaska, told the committee how her union training gave her the skills she needs to do hazardous work in extreme conditions safely, and how her union benefits helped her through what could have been a devastating health crisis:

Shortly after I turned 18, I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. I was not yet covered by union insurance, and had to rely on my parents’ private insurance plan. Unfortunately, their plan was more tilted towards catastrophic coverage. For my necessary surgery there were large co-pays. I am grateful that my parents were able and willing to support me financially through the procedure. But since then, I have had extensive follow up testing and monitoring, an expense I could not afford if I didn’t have the excellent union provided health care. My union health care - for which I was eligible after four months of apprenticeship — even helps cover these follow-up thyroid tests, which is something most insurers wouldn’t have covered as a pre-existing condition. Without this insurance, I’d be in a lot more debt (the yearly tests alone can cost $5,000, of which my insurance covers most of the cost).

Thanks to my union, I have a solid career with a future. I know I can work hard, earn a decent paycheck, and I don’t have to worry about an unexpected illness leaving me destitute.

Sharon Harrison, a worker and CWA member from Lebanon, Virginia, shared her personal experience of organizing via majority sign-up — an experience that shows how this approach to organizing can lead to gains for both the workers and the company:

[B]efore we had our union, favoritism was a problem. Raises didn’t depend on your job performance but whether your manager liked you. The same was true for job security, and even when someone was a top performer, she or he could be told, like I was, that “I can get rid of you for any reason.” …

More than a majority of workers signed up for CWA representation at the Lebanon call center and I can honestly say that all of us, the company and our community included, are better for it.

For us workers, the benefits are real: better pay, better benefits, lower health care costs, a real grievance procedure and fairness. We have new opportunities for careers throughout the company and we know we’re providing the quality service that makes our company a leader in the wireless telecommunications industry.

We know that AT&T Mobility respects us and respects our contributions to the company. We’re in a real partnership now, one that started at the very top of the company and that worked its way through every level.

For AT&T Mobility, there are real benefits as well, and I think that management would be the first to tell you so. With union representation, there’s now a framework to solve problems on the job. We didn’t have that before. There’s a way to address critical issues like turnover, training, and new technology. There’s a clear path to improving our jobs and our work, and that’s important to AT&T Mobility and important to us.

And most movingly, Kelly Badillo, a member of SEIU 32BJ, told the committee about what it was like to be working in the North Tower of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 — and how his union helped him recover from that devastating day:

On the morning of September 11, I was in the lobby of the North Tower waiting to relieve people from the elevator I operated when the plane hit. The noise and the trembling were so loud I thought that someone was filming a movie.

Then, a woman ran into the building on fire and I realized that something horrible was happening. As we rushed to put the fire out, chaos broke out. People were running everywhere, trying to escape the building, but outside there was debris falling everywhere. I didn’t really know what was happening until the fire department arrived and we evacuated the building.

I walked about a block before I turned around to see what happened. I remember speaking to a police officer while looking up at the building, realizing that my brother worked on the 76th floor. I was trying to get back into the building when the 2nd plane hit the South Tower. Everyone started running away from the buildings, getting as far as we could before they both came down…

2,750 people lost their lives, including 47 SEIU members. Many thousands more lost their jobs. More than 1,200 32BJ members - cleaners, security officers, building maintenance, window washers and elevator operators like me - were suddenly trying to live on unemployment.

One week later, I got a call from my union. They asked me to come to our union hall and meet with American Building Maintenance. There were more than 800 people there when I got there. Working together, my union and my employer agreed to:

• $100 per week in supplemental unemployment.
• Continued health insurance for us and our families.
• We kept our pensions.
• The Green Cross was in our union hall everyday to help us deal with our loss and the psychological effects of September 11.

In January of 2002, they called us back. This time they had found a way to get us back to work. They created a priority hiring list so when positions in other buildings came open, we would get those jobs. Through an early retirement plan they helped open additional spots as well. 32BJ was able to work side-by-side with ABM to find work for people like me. I went to work at the Bank of New York Mellon the next month as an elevator operator.

Stories like these are the real reasons why the Employee Free Choice Act is so important — because every American worker deserves what Deb, Sharon and Kelly have — a voice on the job and a shot at the American Dream.

That’s why it was so exciting to be there when after the hearing, Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Rep. George Miller (D-CA) held a press conference where they formally announced that the Employee Free Choice Act was being introduced in both houses of Congress today. Here’s some pictures from that event:

So now, as working people face economic insecurity unlike any most of us have seen in our lifetimes, Congress has the opportunity to take decisive action to turn things around and get us started back on the road towards a healthy economy and a strong middle class.

Pretty big day, huh?