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Demonstrators seek Lincoln's support for bill to aid establishment of unions Saturday, Jun 9, 2007 By Jason Wiest Arkansas News Bureau LITTLE ROCK - Dozens of union members and non-union workers alike gathered here Friday outside the office of Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., to urge the senator to support union-backed federal legislation that would ease union-forming practices. Led by the Arkansas AFL-CIO State Federation, the group of steel workers, plumbers, machinists, government workers, communication workers and others delivered more than 6,000 postcards urging Lincoln to support the Employee Free Choice Act. U.S. Senate Bill 1041 would allow workers to form unions by majority sign-up. Workers could then file a petition with the National Labor Relations Board, which would investigate the forms' authenticity and certify the union as the employees' collective bargaining representative. "Nobody loses their privacy, and the company doesn't have time to start anti-union campaigns," Arkansas AFL-CIO President Alan Hughes said. "We believe that employees should have a right to choose." A spokesman for the Arkansas Chamber of Commerce-Associated Industries of Arkansas said the act takes employees' privacy away, and that the chamber strongly opposes the measure. Under current law, employers do not have to recognize a union even if a majority of workers have signed authorization forms designating their choice to join. Instead, employers can insist on a secret-ballot election overseen by the National Labor Relations Board. Kenny Hall, executive vice president of the state chamber, said the election process is the superior option. "I think there's nothing wrong with the secret ballot elections that are currently being held," Hall said. "That's democracy. People have the right to make a decision in private, not under peer pressure. People are coming to you and asking you to sign a card rather than voting by private ballot." Union supporters contend that employers often use scare tactics during election campaigns to discourage workers from forming unions. "How are (employers) going to know who supported it if it's a private ballot?" Hall said. "That's the beauty of the secret ballot. It protects the employee from coercion on either side." But supporters of the bill at Friday's gathering said scare tactics have worked in the past. Clyde Dailey, a staff representative for the United Steelworkers, said he witnessed such tactics firsthand when trying to organize a union at Temple Inland Corrugated Packaging Inc. in Ft. Smith in 2000 and 2001 under the PACE International Union before it merged with USW. About 80 percent of the workers signed authorization cards and turned them in, Dailey said. "And once we turned them in ... the company started doing these campaigns to try to say 'the union's bad, they're going to corrupt you, they're going to take all your benefits away,'" he said. He accused the company of dragging out the election process, and said portions of the plant were shut down periodically for meetings in which management threatened employees with their jobs if they supported the union's formation. "By the time it actually went to an election, they had scared the people enough where we lost the election by about 5 votes," Dailey said. Linda Harms, spokeswoman for the Temple Inland plant, declined to address Dailey's allegations Friday. "You know, I really don't have anything to say about his comments whatsoever," Harms said. "We're looking for the right to be organized without being interfered with and to have a voice in a work place," Hughes, the AFL-CIO president, said during Friday's demonstration. He later used a bull horn to lead the group in chanting, "What do we want? Free choice! When do we want it? Now!" The act would increase penalties for employers that commit unfair labor practices as well as provide arbitration if labor and management fail to agree on a first contract. Lincoln was in Washington, D.C., during Friday's demonstration at her Little Rock office. Lincoln spokeswoman Donna Kay Yeargan said the senator had not decided whether she would support the bill but had decided to vote for cloture on the measure, a procedure in which the Senate votes to place a time limit on consideration of a bill. "She thinks that this bill ought to come before the Senate for a free and open debate, and she is hopeful that that debate will take place this summer," Yeargan said. Lincoln co-sponsored the legislation last year. The House of Representatives has already passed the bill. President Bush has said he would veto the bill if it comes to his desk. |
