Support the Employee Free Choice Act

To get ahead economically, working people need the freedom to choose for themselves whether to band together in unions to bargain for better wages and benefits. But the current system for forming unions and bargaining is broken. Corporations routinely intimidate, harass, coerce and even fire workers for trying. As a result, good jobs are vanishing and health care coverage and retirement security are slipping out of reach.

That’s a big part of why we elected a new Congress in November.

Take part in our fight for America's middle class by telling your Senators why we need the Employee Free Choice Act.

Sample Letter for Campaign

Subject: Support the Employee Free Choice Act

Dear [ Decision Maker ] ,

I am writing to you to ask for you to support the Employee Free Choice Act.

Over 60 million Americans would join a union today - if they could.

What blocks them are employers who routinely harass, coerce, intimidate, and even fire workers when they try to exercise their legal rights to form unions. As the law currently stands, union elections are prone to delay and often favor employers in their fights against workers' unions.

The Employee Free Choice Act would fix the broken process through which workers form unions by imposing stiffer penalties against employers that violate labor law, and would set up a process for newly-organized workers to negotiate a first contract in a timely manner.

Workers deserve a free and fair chance to form a union if they want to - without risking their livelihood to do so. It's time to give working families the freedoms and protections they deserve.

If you haven't yet already, please endorse the Employee Free Choice Act and sign on as a co-sponsor today.

Sincerely,

Campaign Launched:
February 12, 2007

Background Information

More than half of U.S. workers—nearly 60 million—say they would join a union right now if they could. But the current system for forming unions and bargaining is broken.

Every day, corporations deny employees the freedom to decide for themselves whether

to form unions to bargain for a better life. They routinely intimidate, harass, coerce and even fire people who try to organize unions. Workers are fired in a quarter of private-sector union organizing campaigns; 78 percent of private employers require supervisors to deliver anti-union messages to the workers whose jobs and pay they control; and even after workers successfully form a union, they can’t get a contract one-third of the time.

This is an urgent crisis for workers, blocking their free will and their ability to get ahead.