More Governors Show Support as Momentum Grows for Employee Free Choice
More Governors Show Support as Momentum Grows for Employee Free Choice
by James Parks, Jul 20, 2007
http://blog.aflcio.org/2007/07/20/more-governors-show-support-as-momentum-grows-for-employee-free-choice/
Even though obstructionist Republican senators temporarily denied workers a free choice to join a union, momentum for the Employee Free Choice Act continues to grow. The grassroots movement behind this legislation is bigger and more exciting than anyone believed last year. Workers are mobilizing to make passage of the bill a key issue in the 2008 elections.
More and more elected officials are lining up behind the bill. We reported that 16 governors signed a letter supporting the Employee Free Choice Act. Now that number has grown to 18 as Govs. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts and Brian Schweitzer of Montana, both Democrats, have added their names to those who support allowing workers to join a union without employer interference.
Working families are energized because they have the majority on their side. In addition to the 18 governors, more than 1,350 lawmakers in 70 state, county and city legislative bodies passed resolutions or signed letters supporting Employee Free Choice and seven presidential candidates also are backing the bill. Some 115 religious leaders signed on to a letter backing the bill.
Workers staged nearly 100 actions in the week before the Senate vote and middle-class Americans generated 50,000 phone calls to the Senate, 156,000 faxes and e-mail messages and 220,000 postcards, including 120,000 delivered to the Senate. More than 4,500 workers and elected officials rallied on Capitol Hill to urge support for the legislation.
In the letter, the governors say:
When workers try to form unions, all too often they are harassed, intimidated and even fired for their support of the union. These attacks on workers’ rights, for which there are only weak—if any—remedies, occur all too frequently among the most vulnerable workers of our society, including women, the working poor of all races, and recent immigrants. As a result, those workers who need unions the most are often those who have the least chance of achieving the benefits of unionization.
Click on article link to find link where you can read the letter.
In addition to Patrick and Schweitzer, the governors who have signed the letter are presidential candidate Gov. Bill Richardson (N.M.) and Govs. Bill Ritter (Colo.), Rod Blagojevich (Ill.), Chet Culver (Iowa), Kathleen Sebelius (Kan.), John Baldacci (Maine), Martin O’Malley (Md.), Jennifer Granholm (Mich.), Jon Corzine (N.J.), Eliot Spitzer (N.Y.), Ted Strickland (Ohio), Ted Kulongoski (Ore.), Edward Rendell (Pa.), Christine Gregoire (Wash.), Joe Manchin (W. Va.) and Jim Doyle (Wis.).