Statement of Anna Burger, Chair, Change to Win, on the Employee Free Choice Act
Sept. 6, 2006
Thank you Governor Vilsack and Al From for organizing today’s event in support of America’s working families. We greatly appreciate the support of the Democratic Leadership Council on this critical legislation, which would benefit all workers in America during this time of wage stagnation and declining benefits on the job.
Workers are in crisis so there is no greater calling for political leaders and labor leaders than to restore the American Dream for all working people – on that we are united.
And so are the American people. Last week Change to Win released the “American Dream Survey: Fear and Hope in Working America.” This poll of working people had three striking findings:
- Workers in America are very clear about what the American Dream is:
- Being proud of your work and secure in your job;
- Having affordable health insurance;
- Having a secure and dignified retirement; and
- Being able to ensure a better future for your children.
- Workers in America believe the American Dream is threatened because of stagnant wages, rising health care costs and an inability to save enough for retirement, but they are even more fearful that the next generation will be worse off than they are.
- Despite all of this, workers in America still have hope for change, and they see unions as an important part of the solution. Nearly 70% of them believe that if more working people joined together into unions things could be better.
Workers joining together into unions created America’s great middle class. Union members transformed the jobs in auto, steel, electronics and other mass production industries into the good jobs that made America an engine of economic growth, a democracy with respect for human rights and the beacon of hope for the world.
The Change to Win survey found that 86% of workers believe the right to join a union without fear, retribution or intimidation from their employer is a fundamental American right. But only about half of workers feel they can join with other workers to create a union without fear of retribution.
The Employee Free Choice Act would make the right to join a union a reality.
The central purpose of the Employee Free Choice Act is to allow workers to exercise this right by signing a union card the same way they can sign a card and join a church, join a political party or register to vote.
Yet employers violently oppose this legislation. They like the union election process just the way it is. Because they know that the current elections process for a union are a parody of democracy.
You can’t have a fair election when the employer interrogates, threatens, and fires employees who support the union. But under current law more than 23,000 workers are fired or discriminated against every year for supporting a union.
You can’t have a fair election when the employer threatens to close their doors if the union wins. But a recent study shows that employers threatened to shutdown in half of the elections sampled.
You can’t have a fair election when the employer tells its workers that supporting the union is disloyal, and that having a union means lower wages and lower benefits. But supervisors make these threats every day.
You can’t have a fair election when the employer can force employees to sit in a closed room and listen to anti-union propaganda, but the union doesn’t even get an accurate list of worker names and addresses. But that’s what the current law allows.
And, you can’t have a fair election when the employer can decide to ignore the results and tie up the election for years in court. You remember Florida in 2000? Would anyone have allowed a delay for a year, or two, or three? But that’s often what happens to workers who choose a union.
But workers want and need unions because unions make it more likely that the average working family can achieve the American Dream:
- Wages of union members are 27% higher, on average, than those of nonunion workers.
- 81% of union workers have job-related health coverage. Only 50% of non-union workers do.
- 72% of union workers have a guaranteed, defined benefit pension, compared with only 15% of nonunion workers.
The more union members there are, the better off everyone is. Where there are unions – wages go up, health care coverage exists and pensions are won. But when unions are under attack, as they are today, we are all in danger – our jobs, our families and our communities.
To restore the American Dream we need to turn the low-paying, no-benefit jobs of today into the middle class jobs of tomorrow. But the deck is stacked against working families – because it’s stacked against unions. That’s why Congress needs to pass the Employee Free Choice Act now. It’s good for America’s workers and it’s good for America.
So I want to thank the Democratic Leadership Council on behalf of workers who want and need unions. On behalf of the courageous workers who stand up against great odds.
Workers like Edward Morrison.
Edward was in a line of work most of us try not to think about – he worked the killing floor at Smithfield Food’s Tar Heel plant. Smithfield is the world’s largest pork processor, and Tar Heel is the world’s largest pork processing plant.
The company brags about its strategy for “maximizing efficiency.”
Here’s what that meant for Edward. He worked in a room that was not well lit. It was very hot – often over 100 degrees – and filled with fire and boiling water for the “scalding pots” into which hog carcasses are dumped.
He and two other workers stood at a long table. All day long, hogs weighing up to 400 pounds came down a chute. His job was to catch them and flip them, so the next person can could them, and the next could hang them.
Here’s what Edward recently told us: “I’m going to run through at least 4,000 hogs in a seven-hour shift. I may get ten minutes to eat – because it takes ten minutes to get to the lunchroom, and ten minutes to get back. And you’d better be back on the line on time, because when those hogs come out of the chute they’re not waiting for you, that line never stops.”
He went on: “Some people leave and walk out because they can’t take it. I can’t take it sometimes.”
And then, as he was talking, this big, powerful man, choked up. “But I know I have to be there,” he said, “because I’ve got a family to feed."
A few months later Edward was injured on the job and was terminated.
Edward and his coworkers, and workers for years before him, have been trying to win the union at that plant. But under the current law this is what they have to confront.
In December 2000, a National Labor Relations Board Administrative Law Judge found Smithfield guilty of numerous egregious violations of federal labor law during the 1994 and 1997 union elections including:
- Threatening to close the plant
- Spying on union supporters
- Threatening cuts in wages and benefits if the workers chose a union
- Harassing and intimidating union supporters
(Source: Smithfield vs. UFCW Local 204, Administrative Law Judge John H. West, #JD-158-00, Dec. 15, 2000)
Major findings against Smithfield were upheld by the National Labor Relations Board in December 2004.
Following the vote count in the 1997 election for a union, two union supporters were dragged out of the plant, beaten up, insulted with racial slurs, handcuffed and arrested. The two successfully sued Smithfield under the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, a federal civil rights law. In 2002, a federal jury awarded the plaintiffs $755,000 in damages. Although the award was later overturned on a technicality, the facts of the case are not in dispute. (Source: Rodriguez, Ward v. Smithfield Packing Company, Daniel Priest, United States Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 02-1835, July 30, 2003.)
In 2004, the NLRB issued a complaint against Smithfield Packing, the Smithfield Company Police and Smithfield’s sanitation subcontractor, QSI, for alleged violations of labor law. These charges include:
- Physically assaulting employees
- Falsely arresting employees
- Firing workers for union activity
- Threatening employees with arrest by federal immigration authorities
- Threatening employees with bodily harm.
(Source: QSI Inc., NLRB 11-CA-20240, 11-CA, 20317, Smithfield Packing Company, Tar Heel Division, NLRB 11-CA-20241, 11-CA 20281.)
The sad truth is this isn’t the behavior of a renegade employer this is what happens to workers in America.
This is what happens to workers who simply want a union, a shot at the American Dream.
Workers need the DLC on their side as they stand up for themselves, their coworkers, their families and their communities. They need the DLC on their side as they fight for the American Dream. And we are happy to get the DLC’s support today.
Right Sidebar Navigation
