LiUNA! Laborers International Union of North America - www.liuna.org

The Employee Free Choice Act

America needs good jobs - and unions make jobs better.

• Workers in unions earn on average 28 percent more, they're 62 percent more likely to have employer-covered health care and much more likely to have a secure pension.
• In the construction industry, the advantage is even greater - and workers have the opportunity for advancement through training programs that open the doors to more skills and opportunity.

Workers with unions can help America compete in today's tough economy.

• There are many successful employers who agree that their employees should have a free choice in deciding whether to join together in a union. There's a good reason for that - when workers earn better pay, have secure benefits and a voice at work, they care more about their company.
• Numerous studies show that when construction workers have a union, they're more productive, safer and save employers money. On public construction projects, workers with unions are able to give taxpayers the most for their money.

Too often workers who want to join in a union are blocked by unscrupulous emplyers who blame workers for the own failures. The law today lets them get away with it.

• High-paid CEO's have gone too far - they're cutting hours, health care benefits and raises. When workers try to form unions to fight back, they're met with harassment. In fact:
  • 25 percent of employers deal with an effort by workers to join a union by firing their own employees.
  • 51 percent threaten to shut down the worksite.
  • 91 percent force workers to attend one-on-one anti-union propaganda meetings.

We need policies and solutions that bring back balance in America. More than half of America's workers say then want to join a union. We need changing rules for changing times.

• When America was more prosperous, working people were free to choose to join together for better lives. Today, corporations get to decide how workers join a union. The Employee Free Choice Act will give working people - not corporations - the choice of joining together in a union by simply signing up, or if they choose, through secret ballot elections.
• And Free Choice would require employers to negotiate with workers who want a union, or be faced with arbitration, preventing employers from dragging out negotiations in order to crush workers' efforts to join together.