Business Group Launches Action To Block Worker's Free Choice On Unions

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.laborradio.org/node/10203

By Doug Cunningham

A business group called Save Our Secret Ballot is launching state constitutional amendment efforts in at least five states to require secret ballot elections in union organizing drives. It’s an attempt to thwart the efforts of workers and their unions to pass the Employee Free Choice Act. That labor law reform gives workers the power to choose a union – either with an election or through a majority of workers signing government-certified union cards. The AFL-CIO’s Fred Azcarate.

: “The difference is today it's up to the boss, the employer to decide the way the workers form their union, right? We're saying under the Employee Free Choice Act that choice should really be the workers themselves to decide how they want to form their organization to collectively bargain themselves a better life."

Business wants to keep its right to force union elections in organizing campaigns because they can pressure and intimidate workers with strong anti-union campaigns when those elections are used. President-Elect Barack Obama and a majority in Congress support the Employee Free Choice Act labor law reform. Azcarate says the AFL-CIO is optimistic that this reform can be passed in the first year of the Obama administration.

[ikojo]

1. A representative of this group was on C-SPAN

today. They want constitutional amendments to protect secret ballots, one of the states they are targetting is Missouri.