Employee Free Choice Act
When workers are free to choose to join a union,
our economy can work for everyone again.
That’s why we need the Employee Free Choice Act -
a bill in Congress that would help level the playing field and give workers the freedom to choose a union.
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Support this bill and help us reach one million signatures!
http://www.freechoiceact.org/page/s/petition
Take Action-Call Your U.S. Senator
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A natural response of workers unable to improve their economic situation is to form unions to negotiate a fair share of the economy, and that desire is borne out by recent surveys. Millions of American workers – more than half of non-managers – have said they want a union at their work place. Yet only 7.5% of private sector workers are now represented by a union. And in all of 2007, fewer than 60,000 workers won union status through government-sanctioned elections. What explains this disconnect?
Unions are the single best tool to create an economy that works for all. Workers who belong to unions earn 30 percent more than nonunion workers. They are 52 percent more likely to have employer-provided health coverage and nearly three times more likely to have defined benefit pensions. More than half of U.S. workers—nearly 60 million—say they would join a union right now if they could. But not enough get the chance because of today’s company-dominated system that robs workers of their freedom to make their own decision. Companies routinely intimidate, harass, coerce and fire people who try to form unions. This is an urgent problem for workers, blocking their free will and their ability to improve their economic well-being. The benefits of economic growth can never be broadly shared unless working people regain the free choice to bargain with their companies for a better life.
Many workers, especially union members, would support the Employee Free Choice Act, but few have heard of it, know what this legislation is about or are familiar with the problems it solves. For example, only 54 percent of members know companies resist workers’ attempts to form unions. So unions must expand efforts to educate members about the urgent need for the Employee Free Choice Act.
Working women, on average, are paid 77 cents for every $1 earned by men and are only half as likely to have pensions. They are much more likely to hold minimum wage, part-time or temporary jobs. By joining together in unions, working women help close the gaps created by discrimination, balance demands of work and family and have a way to be heard on the job.
All workers want to be involved in decisions that affect their lives. Don't You? Yet, many find themselves and their suggestions routinely ignored or rejected. Workers want a safe working conditions, living wages, job security and fairness on the job. Most of the uninsured or under-insured are workers in low-wage jobs and their family members.
During the 1950s and 1960s, when America’s economy grew at the fastest rate since World War II, the percentage of workers who had unions was at its highest point in U.S. history. Conversely, on the eve of the worst economic crisis of the 20th century, the Great Depression, union membership had been declining for more than a decade, just as it is today.
The American worker is hungry for measures to strengthen the middle class. According to recent polling, a substantial majority of Americans see the Employee Free Choice Act as part of the common sense solutions critical to economic recovery and reinvigorating the middle class. Seventy-three percent of the American public supports the Employee Free Choice Act.
- Catholics for Working Families was developed by Catholics United, a faith-based group that is committed to passage of The Employee Free Choice Act. http://www.catholicsforworkingfamilies.org/
