Employee Free Choice Act will provide worker protection

Last week, Sen. Tom Harkin and Rep. George Miller introduced the Employee Free Choice Act, vowing to bring it to a vote in Congress as part of President Barack Obama’s economic reform program.

Labor and business will have a huge battle over the act. The legislation would make it easier for workers to organize unions and harder for employers to evade them. It would force employers to respond quickly and bargain in good faith or face increased fines and mandatory, binding arbitration by the National Labor Relations Board.

More than 100 historians, myself included, recently sent Congress a petition from all over the country in support of the act. Why would faculty members, who are so notoriously unorganized, speak out on behalf of unions? There are many reasons, but from a historical perspective the reason is simple: Both democracy and our economy need labor law reform.

The last Great Depression occurred when unions declined to almost nothing in the 1920s. Republicans cut taxes on the rich and removed many of the regulations of the Progressive era, which in turn allowed bankers and corporations to make sky-high profits. The housing and stock markets boomed, and the rich got richer. That led to the crash of 1929.

Because labor was not organized, it had almost no restraining influence on government, leading to a vast divide between the rich and the working class.

Sound familiar?

In 1935, the Wagner Act made it easier for workers to organize, establishing the right to freedom of association and speech on the job without employer intimidation or interference. The rise of unions paved the way to the Social Security Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act and many of the government safety nets we rely upon today.

Because unions gained in strength, workers increased their wages and their buying power. When the economy came out of its stupor during the rapid industrialization of World War II, unions became widespread. The result was the rise of the largest middle class in world history.

This history favors two arguments about the need for labor law reform today.

Without unions, government will not reflect the needs of the great majority of people who work for a living. Not only will democracy suffer, but wages will stagnate, people will not be able to afford what they produce, and our economy will suffer.

Those who have jobs need to be able to advocate for themselves. Employers will not voluntarily raise wages, and government will not do much to help. Only workers themselves can do that, but to do it, they need to be able to harness their numbers in an organized way.

Employers will say the Employee Free Choice Act takes away the workers’ right to a secret ballot. It isn’t true. When 30 percent of people in a workplace petition for it, current law requires a secret ballot election for or against a union. That would not change under the act. The trouble is, employer strategies since the 1980s have turned elections into a nightmare of intimidation, delays and poor results for workers.

The Free Choice Act additionally allows that if 50 percent of employees petition for a union, it will take effect immediately. The choice of methods, an overwhelming petition of union support or a petition for an election, belongs to workers, not to the employers. The latter seem perfectly capable of protecting themselves. Let’s face it: Labor laws are written to protect workers.

History shows that we are in a time where worker rights need increased protection. Unions are clearly not the answer to every problem. But for capitalism to function in a democratic manner, we need them.

Michael Honey is the Fred and Dorothy Haley Professor of Humanities at the University of Washington Tacoma, and author of “Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King’s Last Campaign.” For a list of signers to the historians’ petition, go to www.LAWCHA.org/tls.php.