A recent TWU organizing drive at Durham Bus in South Jersey – a drive the ended in an election loss – is a vivid example of why workers and the labor movement need passage of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).

EFCA has passed the House of Representatives, but is being held hostage in the Senate by a GOP filibuster.

The bill would level the playing field between employers and their workers who want a union. It would eliminate the need for elections in the private sector by legislating card check certification when more than 50 percent of the workers sign authorization cards seeking union representation. It would also provide mandatory arbitration for first contracts if negotiations drag on more than 120 days. And it stiffen penalties on employers who violate their workers’ rights to unionize.

In the Durham drive, TWU organizers collected a solid majority of cards from the workers. If EFCA had been law, TWU would have been certified at that point.  But that wasn’t case. The company then launched a vicious anti-union campaign that included the firings of TWU’s two strongest supporters among the workers.  Also, Durham blitzed its workers with more than 60 pieces of anti-union literature, mandatory meetings and even calls to their homes.

“The company battered them for 48 days,” said TWU Organizer Linda Dill.

Theresa Gares, one of the workers fired by Durham for union activities, spoke at an AFL-CIO sponsored rally in Washington, D.C. to focus public attention on the need for the EFCA bill.

  Labor Campaign Intensifies

Despite the roadblock in the Senate, the AFL-CIO is expanding its campaign for the bill to counter anti-union business propaganda against the legislation.

In a March press conference AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney predicted they would get the needed 60 U.S. Senate votes to overcome the filibuster—and a $200 million-$300 million business ad campaign against it.

“It is common sense legislation that makes good on a simple promise:  If a majority of employees in a workplace want a union, they should be able to have a union and bargain for a better life,” said Sweeney.

According to Sweeney, EFCA has broad public support. “Independent polling shows that 73 percent of the public supports it – and that support comes from every region, every demographic group and every political party.  Even moderate and liberal Republicans support the Employee Free Choice Act, as do a wide array of progressive and public interest allies of working families,” affirmed Sweeney.

Labor’s campaign for the act will concentrate on swing-vote senators.  And they expect further support from Democratic President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis.

As more evidence for the need for EFCA, the AFL-CIO recently released a report by the Center for Economic Policy Research, analyzing NLRB data about organizing campaigns and illegal firings since 1951.

The report, based on definitions of illegal firings developed by the conservative University of Chicago Law School, shows that in 2001-2007, the most recent data available, workers were illegally fired in 26% of all union organizing drives.  That’s the highest percentage since the four years just after President Reagan fired the air traffic controllers.

Illegal firings reached 30% of all campaigns last year.  By contrast, in 1951-55, the first years for which data were available, workers were illegally fired in only 5%.

The Employee Free Choice Act, by putting the choice of majority sign-up or an NLRB-run election in the hands of workers—not the bosses—would close the window business now has to rampantly break labor law with firings, threats and harassment.