Posts Tagged “EFCA”

  • Paul Nowak Paul Nowak

    Calling all academics!

    As most readers of this blog will be aware the US trade union movement is in the midst of an ongoing struggle to secure the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act.

    The TUC has prepared a briefing for UK trade unionists on what you can do to help. This is vital stuff as the union-busters whose activities EFCA will hopefully help curtail are the same charmers who’ve popped up here in the UK.

    As part of our efforts to support US unions the TUC and a number of leading academics have issued a ‘call for support’ and we are hoping to sign up as many UK and UK based academics as possible. John Kelly, Ed Heery, Jane Holgate, Gregor Gall, Kim Moody and John Logan have already signed up – please help us sign up many, many more!

    You can read the ‘call for support’ – and how to sign up – here. please pass this message on to any academics you think will want to show their support for the right to organise in the US.

    ***update*** Over the weekend 75 academics signed up to the ‘call for support’ – lets build on this brilliant support! Please make sure you forward on to anyone you think may wish to sign up!

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    Posted on July 24th, 2009 by Paul Nowak filed under: Global solidarity, Union organising

  • Owen Tudor Owen Tudor

    Union freedom in the USA

    Coming soon to the USA: the freedom to join a union which can bargain for workers’ rights.

    The TUC has joined the campaign for the Employee Free Choice Act in the USA. Brendan Barber has written to the Prime Minister and to the US Embassy, and he’s written an article you could put on your website or union publication.  MPs have put down an Early Day Motion in Parliament, urging their colleagues in Congress to do the right thing.

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    Posted on July 19th, 2009 by Owen Tudor filed under: Global solidarity

  • Owen Tudor Owen Tudor

    West Wing stars back US unions

    For many people, life imitated TV when Barack Obama became President. They see him as the real-life embodiment of everyone’s favourite US President, Josiah (Jed) Bartlet from The West Wing. Now, though, as Obama’s real-life West Wing takes shape, some of the actors who played the President and his team have joined up to support publicly the campaign of America’s trade unions for the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) which would make it easier for working people to join unions and bargain collectively with their employers.

    Actor Martin Sheen - who played President Bartlet – has recorded a radio spot campaigning for EFCA, paid for by ”Catholics for Working Families”. And he,  Bradley Whitford and Richard Schiff (who played Josh Lyman and Toby Ziegler respectively in The West Wing), launched an AFL-CIO campaign in March called Faces of the Employee Free Choice Act, uniting ordinary working people with famous faces.

    The TUC General Council agreed in April to do whatever we can to support US unions in their campaign to see EFCA enacted, and we’ll be looking at famous UK faces to back up their American counterparts. Now, who is the UK equivalent of President Bartlet – Harriet Jones MP out of Dr Who?

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    Posted on May 4th, 2009 by Owen Tudor filed under: Global solidarity

  • John Wood John Wood

    A Long Time Coming


    Jonathan Mann is doing an ambitious project to write a song a day, on a current affairs topic, or one chosen by web users. Rock Cookie Bottom is doing very well, and he’s churning out great short songs on a dizzying turn-around. We especially liked this one on EFCA – the Employee Free Choice Act – which could see a fairer playing field for US unions currently having to deal with the megabucks US unionbusting industry.

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    Posted on March 25th, 2009 by John Wood filed under: Global solidarity

  • Owen Tudor Owen Tudor

    Nobel laureate backs union rights in the USA

    Paul Krugman, the winner of the Nobel prize for economics, says that the US needs the Employee Free Choice Act that US unions are campaigning for. Writing in Rolling Stone magazine (a journal of economic record, of course!) he says that the US economy needs unions just as much as workers do. Last time US unions were actively promoted – after the Great Depression – they managed to increase the share of the national income that went in workers’ wages, massively reduced inequality, and doubled living standards in a generation. The unions themselves tripled in size.

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    Posted on January 24th, 2009 by Owen Tudor filed under: Global solidarity

  • Carl Roper Carl Roper

    Vote for Employee Free Choice (and don’t let this happen)!!!

    A friend sent me this - very funny but making a serious point.

    Send a personalised one to your friends in the States here.

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    Posted on October 27th, 2008 by Carl Roper filed under: Global solidarity

  • Carl Roper Carl Roper

    McCain’s spurious anti-EFCA rhetoric

    “Senator Obama is measuring the drapes, and planning with Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid to raise taxes, increase spending, take away your right to vote by secret ballot in labor elections, and concede defeat in Iraq. But they forgot to let you decide. My friends, we’ve got them just where we want them.”

    The above is an extract from a speech given by John McCain at a rally in Virginia as reported here in the Washington Post.  Anyone familiar with the practice of union busters in US recognition ballots will know that this is very disingenuous and that by the time many workers get to vote in labor elections, they’ve usually endured a pretty heavy campaign of intimidation and scare tactics. 

    The following were the findings of a study of union organising campaigns by Cornell University;

    • Ninety-two percent of private-sector employers, when faced with employees who want to join together in a union, force employees to attend closed-door meetings to hear anti-union propaganda; 80 percent require supervisors to attend training sessions on attacking unions; and 78 percent require that supervisors deliver anti-union messages to workers they oversee.
    • Seventy-five percent hire outside consultants to run anti-union campaigns, often based on mass psychology and distorting the law.
    • Half of employers threaten to shut down partially or totally if employees join together in a union.
    • In 25 percent of organizing campaigns, private-sector employers illegally fire workers because they want to form a union.
    • Even after workers successfully form a union, in one-third of the instances, employers do not negotiate a contract.

    You can find out more why secret ballots in the context of labor elections don’t work - here.

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    Posted on October 22nd, 2008 by Carl Roper filed under: Global solidarity