The segment follows Thindwa, a Zimbabwe-born community organizer who has worked for years to help workers in his community—from the nurses of Resurrection Health Care to the sit-in strikers at Republic Windows. He helps community members get involved in rallies, contact their elected leaders and participate in campaigns to improve their lives and those of their neighbors. As Moyers says, Thindwa’s tireless efforts are:

All in a day’s work for a man who spends his days organizing people to tackle issues they face in the workplace, from low wages and meager benefits, to corporate behavior.

Now Thindwa, like JwJ organizers and working families around the country, is taking part in the campaign to pass the Employee Free Choice Act—hosting rallies, gathering signatures, getting letters to elected officials and helping young leaders speak out in favor of the critical bill. He knows the importance of giving workers the freedom to form unions and bargain, and the role that unions can play in giving workers a stake in the economy, as well as giving them the tools to improve their own lives and participate in their communities.

Thimdwa understands how important unions are to a fair economy, where worker power  balances the overwhelming corporate power. He also knows the importance of good jobs to building strong families and strong communities. Says Thindwa:

The question of good wages, decent wages for workers, isn’t just a question of economic justice, isn’t just a question of fairness for that worker….It does have broad implications for social stability.

You can watch the entire segment here. It’s an inspiring story of one man’s effort to help make the economy work for everyone.

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As part of SLAP’s week of action, held each year to honor Martin Luther King Jr. and Farm Workers founder César Chávez, students in 28 states and the District of Columbia are getting involved in the campaign for the Employee Free Choice Act. In coordination with the student week of action, Jobs with Justice will hold a “Resistance and Recovery” week of events.

You can find out about student actions in your area here.

United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) also is getting involved with the fight for Employee Free Choice. Over the past week, USAS has held regional conferences for students concerned with workers’ rights. As part of the USAS Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference, students from around Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Maryland and the District of Columbia on March 27 attended a rally at Penn State University to demand passage of the Employee Free Choice Act. This past weekend, hundreds of students attended the Southeast Regional Conference in Decatur, Ga.

The enthusiasm of thousands of students around the country is yet another critical element in passing the Employee Free Choice Act.

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Specter made a statement today about the failures of America’s labor laws—failures that make the Employee Free Choice Act necessary—but he also advanced falsehoods spread by corporate front groups. The statement shows that he’s listening not to his constituents, but to the big-money interests who are hoping to prevent workers from exercising their basic freedom to form unions and bargain. 

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney says that while Specter’s cave-in to corporate lobbyists is disappointing, it won’t blunt the momentum behind this critical bill to protect worker’s freedom to form unions and bargain for a better life. 

Today’s announcement by Sen. Specter—a sponsor of the original Employee Free Choice Act who voted for cloture in 2007—is frankly a disappointment and a rebuke to working people, to his own constituents in Pennsylvania and working families around the country.

The fact is the Employee Free Choice Act has more support than ever—large majorities in both houses of Congress, the president and vice president, 73 percent of the public. We will continue to work with Democrats and a number of Republicans to create common-sense solutions to the decades of corporate power. 

We do not plan to let a hardball campaign from Big Business derail the Employee Free Choice Act or the dreams of workers. 

There are deep flaws in our labor laws, as Sen. Specter acknowledged today. The freedom to join together and bargain with employers for fair wages and better benefits is critical to rebuilding our middle class—and now is exactly the time to do it, as we begin to revive our economy in a way that works for everyone.  In the coming weeks, we will be escalating our campaign and finding the best ways forward to a balanced, strong economy.

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Some of the nation’s top historians have signed a petition asking Congress to pass the Employee Free Choice Act and protect the freedom to form unions and bargain.

Organized by University of Washington historian Michael Honey, who is president of the Labor and Working-Class History Association (LAWCHA), the petition includes the signatures of 100 historians from around the country. They’ve looked at our nation’s historical record and say that it’s clear we need to pass the Employee Free Choice Act.

Writing on behalf of these 100 historians, Honey makes a strong argument about what the lessons of history can teach us about our current economic straits and the need for workers’ freedom to bargain as a tool to help set our economy on the right track by addressing the long-term imbalances in power between workers and management.

From historical perspective the reason is simple: both democracy and our economy needs labor law reform.

The last Great Depression occurred when unions declined to almost nothing in the 1920s. Republicans cut taxes on the rich and removed many of the regulations of the Progressive era, which in turn allowed bankers and corporations to make sky-high profits. The housing and stock market boomed, and the rich got richer. That led to the crash of 1929.

Because labor was not organized, it had almost no restraining influence on government, leading to a vast divide between the rich and the working class. Sound familiar?

History may not repeat itself exactly, but as Honey notes, there are a lot of similarities between our current situation and the 1930s. In fact, opponents of workers’ freedom to form unions are using scarily similar language, as the Labornerd blog points out. LaborNerd provides a list of anti-worker, anti-union quotes and asks readers to determine which quote comes from the 2000s and which is from the 1930s.

So when corporate front groups try to make the argument that an economic crisis is the wrong time to protect workers’ freedom to bargain for a better life, we should remember it’s the same broken record from the 1930s. As Honey says, empowering workers to form unions and bargain is critical to ensuring a strong, sustainable recovery.

In 1935, the Wagner Act made it easier for workers to organize, establishing the right to freedom of association and speech on the job without employer intimidation or interference. The rise of unions paved the way to the Social Security Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, and many of the government safety nets we rely upon today.

Because unions gained in strength, workers increased their wages and their buying power. When the economy came out of its stupor during the rapid industrialization of World War II, unions became widespread. The result was the rise of the largest middle class in world history.

The support of these historians is an important contribution to the fight to pass the Employee Free Choice Act. You can download a full list of the 100 historians who have signed on to this petition here.

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Corporate leaders are making a lot of unfounded claims that the Employee Free Choice Act would be bad for small businesses. But when you ask many small business owners and entrepreneurs across the country, you’ll hear a different story. They understand the Employee Free Choice Act will help create a stronger economy, with a better-trained workforce and a more economically stable customer base. 

During a conference call today hosted by the worker advocacy group American Rights at Work, some of these small business owners spoke up to explain why they support the Employee Free Choice Act. 

Ruth Schepp is a business owner in West Fargo, N.D., who employs six people and sees their membership in the Machinists (IAM) union as a way to cooperate with them to build a stronger firm.

Says Schepp: 

I want my employees to be a part of this company as it grows. I want them to feel that they have a good job, a secure job. Good jobs support families; they support our community. 

I want workers to be able to form a union and to have a choice in our economy. They deserve to have the fair chance to form a union without fear. 

In Pennsylvania, Jim O’Malley, who owns and runs the Print and Copy Center of Pittsburgh, says he appreciates the training and apprenticeship programs through his employees’ union, which help ensure he has great employees who can contribute to the company’s overall functioning. Says O’Malley: 

My employees offer good, productive ideas, and we all work together. We have common goals we work towards. 

I look at my employees as a partner. They understand that if the company is successful, they share in that. 

Darren Horndasch, the owner of Wisconsin Vision, echoes that sentiment, saying that having a union—Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW)—makes his employees more career-minded and invested in providing excellent service. Horndasch says having a union doesn’t undermine his competitiveness; it gives him a competitive edge. 

With our employees, we’ve had an opportunity to develop policies and procedures that benefit the company. It’s been an entirely positive experience. 

Horndasch says that without a strong middle class,  small businesses like his won’t be able to function—and giving people a good union job makes sure they can be part of a strong middle class. 

Josh Bivens, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), says the theory that union membership is bad for small businesses falls apart in the face of real evidence and empirical research. Economic analysts who have studied these issues in depth, Bivens says, agree with small business owners like Schepp, Horndasch and O’Malley. By allowing workers to bargain for better wages and benefits, unions can help build an economy that works for everyone in the long term. 

Union membership directly addresses the single largest problem in our economy, which is the rise economic inequality. The research on this is crystal clear. 

The last two recessions have been caused by over-leveraging and consumption that rose ahead of income. The Employee Free Choice Act would point us in the direction of economic expansion fueled by income finance, not debt finance. 

When you look at both the economic research and the experiences of small business owners who have worked with unions, it’s clear that the scare tactics of anti-Employee Free Choice Act front groups don’t match up to reality.

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Released by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), Still Open for Business looks at research over the past two decades into union membership, wages and firm survival and finds that there’s no evidence to suggest that firms where workers have a union are more likely to go out of business than any other firm.

This research provides evidence that this causal effect of union recognition is zero….In short, the biggest fear voiced by employer groups regarding unionization—that it will inevitably drive them out of business—has no evidentiary basis.

DiNardo’s study compares conventional wisdom and corporate spin about unions to reality. Firms where workers have narrowly won union recognition in an election have similar failure rates to firms where workers narrowly lost an election to form a union.

In addition, DiNardo says that workers who are members of unions have strong incentives to cooperate and ensure that their bargaining results in a company that’s sustainable in the long term.

The obvious fact that unions have no stake in driving employers out of business is reinforced by this evidence. It seems clear that American employers as a group need not fear firm insolvency as a result of granting workers rights to collective bargaining.

In their efforts to spin, distort and mislead against the Employee Free Choice Act, corporate front groups and anti-worker politicians are using the threat of company shutdowns as one of their top scare tactics. But it’s just not the case. DiNardo’s report—looking at the facts and the numbers, rather than starting from assumptions about what must be true—is a valuable counter to the anti-Employee Free Choice front groups who trumpet groundless claims about how unions affect business.

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A striking concession today from the hard-right, corporate-friendly editorial board of the Wall Street Journal: In the midst of an angry editorial against the Employee Free Choice Act, the authors undermine years of messaging by anti-worker corporate groups by acknowledging:

The bill doesn’t remove the secret ballot option from the National Labor Relations Act….

However, the Journal writes erroneously that the bill makes secret ballots a “dead letter.” But as we’ve pointed out many times, the Employee Free Choice Act puts the choice of majority sign-up or a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election in the hands of the workers who want to form a union, rather than leaving workers at the mercy of management in that decision.

This acknowledgment is a big turnaround from the Journal’s frequent practice—detailed here by Think Progress—of making the “eliminate secret ballots” claim.

So there you have it: the Wall Street Journal editorial board says that the Employee Free Choice Act won’t eliminate secret ballots. Those who continue to try and contend that it does are trying to mislead the public and contradicting what the bill’s opponents know is true.

Not that secret ballots are sacrosanct for opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act when it serves their own interests. In fact, the Republican Party bylaws forbid secret ballot votes on most matters before the party’s national committee, notes Greg Sargent of The Plum Line blog.

The Journal’s ed board demonstrates that opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act are not against it because of their deep sense of respect for workers’ rights or for fairness. They oppose it because it would level the playing field and end corporate dominance over the process by which workers form unions. It would give workers the bargaining power they need to get a fair share of the value they create and would take the decision about how to form unions out of bosses’ hands and give it to workers.

Despite the Journal editorial board’s opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act, apparently the staff decided it can’t keep up the act anymore. Today we herald the beginning of the end for the myth of “eliminating the secret ballot.”

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The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has joined with the U.S. Council for International Business (USCIB) for its latest spin against the freedom to form unions. The two groups are promoting a paper written by Stefan Jan Marculewicz, a management-side attorney, asserting the Employee Free Choice Act would violate the standards of the International Labor Organization (ILO). Unsurprisingly, an examination of this claim by experts shows the argument is false.

Lance Compa, a law lecturer at Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations, says Marculewicz’s arguments mischaracterize ILO laws and apply them irrelevantly. In particular, it’s flatly wrong to say, as the Marculewicz paper does, that majority sign-up—legal in the United States and commonplace in nations around the world—is somehow outside of ILO standards.

Indeed, in most countries of the world, a version of card-check (i.e., workers joining the union by signing cards, signing petitions, attending assemblies or otherwise signaling their desire for representation) is the method by which previously unrepresented workers come to the bargaining table with their employers.

John Logan, research director for the University of California-Berkeley’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, calls the claims made in the Marculewicz paper “laughable.” He says management control of the process for forming unions means that the United States isn’t living up to ILO standards now.

In a series of decisions over the past decade, the ILO’s Committee on Freedom of Association has consistently expressed concern over the failure of the National Labor Relations Act to adequately protect American workers’ right to choose a union and engage in collective bargaining.

Contrary to Marculewicz’s assertions, Logan says that the Employee Free Choice Act, if passed, would move our nation closer to, not further from, ILO’s principles of protecting the right to form a union and bargain.

James Gross, professor of labor policy at Cornell, likewise examined Marculewicz’s arguments and found they don’t stand up to scrutiny. In fact, says Gross, by protecting workers’ freedom to choose to form a union without coercive management interference and by ensuring that workers get the chance to bargain for a first contract, the Employee Free Choice Act would move the United States closer to international standards.

The International Labor Organization has stated workers’ freedom of association includes collective bargaining and the right to a legally-binding collective agreement. Where workers cannot secure a union contract, there is no freedom of association as defined by the ILO.

Compa notes the irony of these groups appealing to international labor standards as a test of policy, given their record of disregard for such standards in the past:

Since the USCIB is suddenly so enamored of ILO principles, you might ask them if they are now willing to accept CFA [the ILO's Committee on Freedom of Association] decisions on permanent striker replacements, union representatives’ access to the workplace, exclusions of low level supervisors, university teaching assistants, TSA screeners and other workers, bargaining rights for public employees, and other decisions finding U.S. law in violation of international standards.

The fact is that the Employee Free Choice Act is needed to bring the United States up to recognized international standards of protecting workers’ freedom to form a union, as noted in a Human Rights Watch report published in January. Nations around the world have labor laws similar to the Employee Free Choice Act.

As the AFL-CIO’s Stewart Acuff notes, the global labor community supports the Employee Free Choice Act as a way to protect workers and bring U.S. laws in line with successful international norms. Acuff says that Guy Ryder, general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), is enlisting global unions and their allies in the fight to pass the Employee Free Choice Act. As Ryder said in a letter to ITUC affilates:

The violation of freedom of association and the rights to organize and bargain collectively weaken the American Trade Union movement considerably. That, in turn, weakens the international trade union movement….In addition, U.S. anti-union practices serve as a destructive model for industrial relations in other countries.

Message to the spinners at the USCIB and Chamber of Commerce: This argument just doesn’t work.

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Although the focus on the Employee Free Choice Act is on the U.S. House and the Senate, it’s important to remember the reason we’re closer than ever to passing this critical bill is because working people turned out in huge numbers to elect a president who will sign it into law. We got a fresh reminder of that commitment yesterday when Barack Obama paid a visit to Costa Mesa, Calif., to discuss the economy.

In his comments at the Costa Mesa town hall meeting, Obama pointed out that making it easier for workers to form unions is critical to making the economy work for everyone again.

Robert Balgenorth, president of the Building and Construction Trades Council of California, was among the attendees, and in a question and answer session, Balgenorth criticized the Bush administration’s failure to enforce prevailing wage laws and other protections for workers. Obama pointed to these protections as key to strengthening the middle class—and added that workers also must have the freedom to form unions if we’re going to build an economy that’s sustainable in the long term:

We think it is important that unions have the opportunity to organize themselves…the business press says that’s anti-business and whenever I hear that I’m always reminded of what Henry Ford said when he first started building the Model T, and he was paying his workers really well. And somebody asked him, they said, “Why are you paying your workers so well?” He said, “Well, if I don’t pay them well, they won’t be able to buy a car.”

…part of the problem with our economy, and the way it was growing, was that wages and incomes for ordinary working families were flat for the entire decade. Now, I don’t need to tell you this because you’ve experienced it in your own lives. You’ve just barely kept up with inflation while people at the very top…were seeing all the benefits.

When I say that we should make it easier for unions to organize, and observe Davis-Bacon [rules that ensure workers on federally funded building projects are paid a fair wage], all I’m trying to do is to restore some balance to our economy so that middle-class families who are working hard…should be able to save, buy a home, go on a vacation once in a while. They should be able to save for retirement, send their kids to college, that’s not too much to ask for. That’s the American dream, and the only way we get there is if we have bottom-up economic growth instead of top-down economic growth.

It should be no surprise at this point that Obama will work to protect the freedom to form unions and bargain—after all, both Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have pledged their support over the past month—but it’s a delight every time it’s reaffirmed. When the Employee Free Choice Act passes, we have a president who will sign it into law. It’s what millions of workers fought for last year, and it’s what we need to turn around our economy.

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