With 'Free Choice,' Workers Win

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Shirley Brown, a housekeeper at Westlake Hospital in Melrose Park, Ill., knows first hand why Congress needs to pass the Employee Free Choice Act. The company that runs Westlake, Resurrection Health Care of Chicago, has done everything it can over the past two years to thwart efforts by Brown and her co-workers to improve their pay and benefits by organizing a union. "They hired a union-busting law firm, forced us to attend anti-union meetings," she testified at a Capitol Hill news conference in April, and even threatened the workers' free-speech rights.

"We were told we could not talk about organizing a union at work, in the bathroom, on our lunch breaks, cafeteria, hallways — wherever. Resurrection has physically removed our mailboxes to keep us from passing around union literature. They're always watching us."

That's why workers who want to form a union need protection from Congress, said U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), a key sponsor — along with U.S. Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) — of the Employee Free Choice Act (S. 842 and H. R. 1696). "Increasingly, we are finding an atmosphere that is anti-worker, anti-labor, anti-union," Kennedy said at the press event.

The legislation has been introduced in previous sessions of Congress but is needed now, more than ever, because of the increasing hostility of employers to organizing efforts. If passed, the measure would help protect workers' rights by increasing fines on companies that illegally fire workers for supporting a union; requiring employers to recognize a union once a majority of employees sign cards authorizing representation; and providing for mediation and arbitration of first-contract disputes.