Scholars call Employee Free Choice Act vital to economic recovery

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.examiner.com/x-2071-DC-Special-Interests-Examiner~y2009m1d25-Scholars-call-Employee-Free-Choice-Act-vital-to-economic-recovery?cid=exrss-DC-Special-Interests-Examiner

January 25, 8:55 AM
by Ron Moore

In an open letter to the new president titled: What Obama Must Do, in the latest issue of Rolling Stone magazine, Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize-winning Princeton economist endorses the Employee Free Choice Act as a key component of the economic recovery plan:

Key points include:

· “laying the groundwork to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it much harder for employers to intimidate workers who want to join a union... the legislation will enable America to take a huge step toward recapturing the middle-class society we've lost.”

· “The legislation will enable America to take a huge step toward recapturing the middle-class society we've lost.”

· “Before the Great Compression, America was a society of rich and poor; afterward it was a society in which most people, rightly, considered themselves middle class.”

· “Unions not only negotiated better wages for their own members, they also enhanced the bargaining power of workers throughout the economy. At the time, conservatives warned that wage gains would have disastrous economic effects — that the rise of unions would cripple employment and economic growth. But in fact, the Great Compression was followed by the great postwar boom, which doubled American living standards over the course of a generation.”

Additionally, scholar James K. Galbraith, author of the new book “The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too” agrees. He notes the labor movement’s essential role in creating The New Deal and the economic benefits produced when workers organize.


* “The Employee Free Choice Act should be high on the agenda. It will lead to worker productivity growth and increase the standard of living.”

FULL story at link.

[midnight]

1. I can't wait to this is passed....