Yesterday Costco Wholesale Corp., Starbucks Corp. and Whole Foods Market Inc. offered an alternative to the union-backed “card-check” legislation that U.S. business groups are spending millions of dollars to defeat. The proposal is being presented through Lanny Davis, former special counsel to President Clinton.

Beware of Employers Trying to Make Compromises on The Employee Free Choice Act!



Employers Just Want To STEP on Workers RIGHTS - NO Compromise on the Employee Free Choice Act!

Inside sources have revealed to us some key problems with the proposal include:

The proposal eliminates workers' ability to choose majority sign-up, the one method for organizing proven to reduce coercion and pressure from all sides on workers. Instead, the proposal would force all workers through the broken, corporate-dominated NLRB system.



The proposal rejects first contract arbitration — a tried and proven method for ensuring good faith bargaining and one of the core elements of the Employee Free Choice Act. Under this proposal, employers would continue to have the union-busting power to drag out bargaining indefinitely and keep employees from gaining the kind of enforceable contracts that CEOs always give themselves. First contract arbitration provides the necessary incentive for the parties to reach agreement on their own terms.



Rather than respecting employees' choice, the proposal gives CEOs the power to initiate drives to eliminate unions. Current law forbids corporate-initiated decertification campaigns, for good reason. Instead of bargaining a contract in good faith, employers would be initiating drives to get rid of the workers' chosen representative. Organizing a union or getting rid of a union should be the workers' choice, not the CEO's.



Rather than offering a level playing field, the proposal preserves CEOs' ability to force employees to attend one-on-one meetings with supervisors or mandatory mass anti-union meetings at work. We do not tolerate such undemocratic, coercive behavior in federal elections. Yet, while forcing employees to go through the NLRB election process, the proposal would preserve this coercive aspect of corporate-dominated NLRB elections.



The proposal does not offer pro-union workers or union organizers the same access that employers have to workers. In fact, the proposal does not improve access to workers one iota. According to the proposal, unions and management would be "permitt[ed] each to make presentations to employees at a neutral location concerning the issue of whether to form a union." Nothing in current law forbids such presentations at a neutral location. The problem is that the one place workers convene everyday, the workplace, is off-limits to union organizers and completely controlled and monopolized by management. While management has no restrictions on campaigning at work, both the union and workers are severely restricted.



The AP reports that another compromise fashioned by an attorney for certain unnamed companies in the service industry would also give unions equal access to employees if 30% of employees sign cards. If a union succeeds in getting 50% of employees to sign cards, then it may petition the NLRB for a “quickie” election to be conducted in 15 days. If a union succeeds in getting 70% of the employees to sign cards, then the union would be certified without a secret-ballot election (EFCA as currently drafted permits certification once 50%+1 of employees sign cards). This compromise is arguably worse than EFCA — retaining the essential features of EFCA while providing the fig leaf of maintaining the secret ballot according to CEO Executives.





TAKE ACTION NOW

Strengthening and growing America's middle class depends on the ability of employees to exercise their democratic rights at work. The Employee Free Choice Act is simple: it will help our economy work for everyone again by giving workers, not CEOs, a say about their job security, their wages, their retirement savings and their health care. Workers will not benefit if CEOs continue to have a veto over their rights at work.

Proposal to Gut Employee Free Choice Act: Written by CEOs, for CEOs



www.TheTruthAboutEFCA.Org

http://efcanow.blogspot.com/

For more information on Employer Intimidation and Union-Busting FEAR Tactics Press Below

http://efcanow.blogspot.com/2009/02/just-say-no-to-employee-free-choice-act.html

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