UE Convention Resolutions
Labor Law Reform - Now!
The Bill of Rights has never been applied in the workplace, where employers are empowered to maintain near-absolute control. Without these rights, our statutory rights to organize into unions are shredded by bosses. Our freedom to be protected from unreasonable searches and seizures ends at the gate or front door. Freedom of speech and assembly don't exist while you're at work unless you have a union.
The passage of the Wagner Act in 1935 was the closest that labor would get to a "bill of rights." It was immediately attacked by the employers through their allies in Congress and the courts. The Wagner Act provided labor the right to organize, to bargain, and to strike without employer interference. For the first time employers were required to recognize and bargain with a union of the workers choice.
Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947. The law took away workers' rights to use secondary boycotts in fights with the employer, made closed shops illegal, allowed states to pass "Right-to-Work" laws, allowed the President to interfere in strikes, and gave employers the ability to prevent workers from organizing.
Beginning with Ronald Reagan firing striking air traffic control workers, and with his appointment of ultra-conservative union haters to various governmental agencies and courts, the rights of working people have been diminishing. No dramatic action has been taken by any succeeding presidential administration to reverse this decline.
UE has been in the forefront of calling for reform of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). No significant progress has been made on labor rights for decades, and today employers brazenly violate the law and victimize working people who dare to unionize. In the public sector, many workers are prohibited from bargaining collectively and those who bargain more often than not lack the right to strike.
Few workers in private-sector workplaces today successfully run the gauntlet and win the protection of a union contract. Nearly 10 percent of workers who organize are fired by their employers, amounting to tens of thousands every year. Only half of the union drives that survive the minefield of employer lawbreaking are won by working people. Only half of these will obtain a first union contract. The ranks are then cut in half again, as only 50 percent of workers winning first union contracts gain second contracts. Since 1979, the percentage of unionized workers in the U.S. has declined from 24 percent to 12 percent and the percentage is now less than 7 percent in manufacturing.
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), charged with protecting our rights, too often frustrates our ability to organize, bargain and strike. In UE organizing campaigns and strikes over the past years, the NLRB has allowed employers to appeal decisions that followed clear precedents in order to stall union recognition, and has made rulings on clear unfair labor practice charges which effectively remove the right to strike.
Labor law reform has become part of the political discourse in America once again, as the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) campaign has grown. This legislation provides for automatic recognition of a union when a majority of workers sign union cards, replacing the existing employer-dominated "election" process. The bill provides real penalties for bosses who break the law and fire or harass workers trying to join a union, as well as facilitating the negotiation of first union contracts with binding arbitration. Even if it passed as proposed, it does not solve all issues of worker rights – for example, it does not reinstate a single one of the powerful tools labor had until the passage of Taft Hartley.
The battle to pass EFCA intensified once President Obama was elected. Corporate executives have spent over $200 million to defeat EFCA, conducting a scare, lie, and terror campaign on lawmakers and the general public, which parallels their anti-union tactics in the workplace. The next phase of the battle for labor law reform will likely consist of new legislation or a watered-down version of EFCA.
In order to safeguard workers, the right to associate – the right of working people to negotiate the conditions under which they work, must be grounded in the constitution as a fundamental human right. Until that day, we must push for the most broad-based statutory labor rights possible.
THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 71st UE CONVENTION:
- Calls on Congress to pass the Employee Free Choice Act (SB 560/HR 1409), and calls on the Obama White House to make rapid passage a top priority;
- Urges all locals to join with other unions to defend labor rights;
- Calls on our membership to engage in aggressive struggle including, where appropriate, civil disobedience in order to obtain workplace justice;
- Calls on Congress to repeal Taft-Hartley.