Senate to Debate Employee Free Choice Act

AFL-CIO NowBlog
The Senate is expected to begin debate on the Employee Free Choice Act (S. 1041) on Monday, with a vote to come as early as Wednesday, June 20. ...

The Employee Free Choice Act has already passed in the House and now that it's coming to the floor of the Senate the Corporate/Republican/Right is absolutely hysterical about it, but also clinging to the hope that there won't be the 60 votes necessary for cloture.
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Blog: ActNow! | Posted 06/14/2007 @ 12:48pm
Redressing Taft-Hartley
Peter Rothberg

Sixty years ago this month, US labor law was dramatically altered in the interests of capital when the Republican-led 80th Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act over intense opposition from organized labor. The legislation survived a veto by President Harry Truman, who described the act as a "slave-labor bill", arguing that it would "conflict with important principles of our democratic society."

The amendments enacted in Taft-Hartley added a list of prohibited actions, or "unfair labor practices", on the part of unions to the National Labor Relations Act, which had previously existed to monitor abuses on the part of employers. The Act prohibited jurisdictional strikes, secondary boycotts and "common situs" picketing, closed shops, and monetary donations by unions to federal political campaigns. Union shops were heavily restricted, and states were allowed to pass "right-to-work" laws that outlawed union shops. Furthermore, the executive branch of the Federal government was empowered to break strikes if an action "imperiled the national health or safety," a test that has been interpreted broadly by the courts.

Earlier this year, the new Democratic-led House passed the Employee Free Choice Act, designed to undo some of the worst aspects of Taft-Hartley. The Act would ensure that when a majority of employees in a workplace decide to form a union, they can do so without the debilitating obstacles employers now use to block their free choice. Union officials called it the most important piece of pro-labor legislation to pass a house of Congress in decades. ...(more)

Our Democratic Legislators have all co-sponsored the Employee Free Choice Act...

The Employee Free Choice Act (H.R. 800, S. 1041), supported by a bipartisan coalition in Congress, would level the playing field for workers and employers and help rebuild America’s middle class. It would restore workers’ freedom to choose a union by:

* Establishing stronger penalties for violation of employee rights when workers seek to form a union and during first-contract negotiations.
* Providing mediation and arbitration for first-contract disputes.
* Allowing employees to form unions by signing cards authorizing union representation.

The Employee Free Choice Act, supported by a bipartisan coalition in Congress, would level the playing field for workers and employers and foster economic growth for America's middle class. The following members of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate are co-sponsoring the bill (H.R. 800, S. 1041) in the 110th Congress.

Washington
House

Baird, Brian (D-WA-03)
Dicks, Norman D. (D-WA-06)
Inslee, Jay (D-WA-01)
Larsen, Rick (D-WA-02)
McDermott, Jim (D-WA-07)
Smith, Adam (D-WA-09)

Senate

Cantwell, Maria (D-WA)
Murray, Patty (D-WA)