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Around the Internet: The Fight to Pass the Employee Free Choice Act

by via Seth Michaels, AFL-CIO
Friday, March 6, 2009 : Here are a few good reads from around the Web describing why America’s working people need the Employee Free Choice Act, proposed legislation to restore the freedom to form unions and bargain.
Robert Borosage at the Campaign for America’s Future says the Employee Free Choice Act is critical to reviving the middle class. The Employee Free Choice Act:

isn’t just a union fight [snip]. It’s about whether we can return to an economy with a broad middle class. When unions represented 30 percent of the private economy, they won family wages, health care, pensions, paid vacations—the basics of middle-class existence. Rising union wages and benefits helped lift the wages of nonunion workers as well. America has never done much redistribution through taxes. We built a middle class because workers were able to win a decent share of the profits and productivity that they helped to generate. Unions were central to that.

As the president suggests, this is a central fight for an economy that works. If workers are paid decently, families needn’t take on massive debts to educate their children or afford their home.

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§Biden to AFL-CIO: Employee Free Choice Act Key to Rebuilding Middle Class
by via James Parks, AFL-CIO
Friday, March 6, 2009 :     Vice President Joe Biden met with the AFL-CIO Executive Council today in Miami, where he reiterated the administration’s support for the Employee Free Choice Act, saying, “If a union is what you want, a union you’re entitled to have.”      

Vice President Joe Biden told the AFL-CIO Executive Council today that returning our economy to health means restoring the basic right to join a union and bargain collectively. And the way to do that is by passing the Employee Free Choice Act.

He quoted President Obama saying: ‘”I don’t buy the argument that providing workers with collective bargaining rights somehow weakens the economy or worsens the business environment.”

If you’ve got workers who have a decent pay and benefits, they also are customers for your business. So let me add to that and say that I have a simple, basic belief, one that we’re going to work hard to put into action:  If a union is what you want, a union you’re entitled to have.

The vice president quoted AFL-CIO President John Sweeney’s recent remarks in his column expressing basic truths that should guide the AFL-CIO in 2009:

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§The Grassroots Fight for Employee Free Choice
by via Seth Michaels, AFL-CIO
Friday, March 6, 2009 :       Here are a few of the latest grassroots actions in support of the Employee Free Choice Act, proposed legislation that would level the playing field for workers seeking to form a union.

A coalition of Catholic organizations has launched Catholics for Working Families, a new campaign to engage the Catholic community to protect the freedom to form unions and bargain. Inspired by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, whose statements have consistently supported the freedom to form unions and bargain, some of America’s most active Catholic organizations have launched a website and a petition in support of the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act. Says Bishop Gabino Zavala, archbishop of the Los Angeles diocese and co-president of the Interfaith Worker Justice board of directors:

…it is vitally necessary to recognize that we cannot recover the health of our economy and our society without ensuring that the dignity and freedom of every worker is secure.

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