Published: April 5, 2009

In the debate over the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill in Congress to help workers join unions, many people have forgotten that our middle class flourished when more workers were in unions. With our economic recovery linked to efforts to strengthen the middle class, the bill is a good way to put workers and the economy back on the right track. As President Obama has said, “unions are part of the solution, not part of the problem.”

Here in Delaware workers efforts to unionize are being met with stiff resistance and intimidation. Optima Cleaning Systems - a cleaning contractor of the bailout recipient Wilmington Trust - has been obstructing unionization efforts, including the videotaping and photographing of union organizers attempting to speak to office cleaners who earn as little as $7.25 an hour with no quality and affordable healthcare.
 
These tactics are hard to stop and they make it nearly impossible for workers to join unions through elections within a reasonable period of time. Without a second, fall-back option for workers to unionize by signing a card -- an option which the Employee Free Choice Act would provide -- these and countless other workers are being denied a fair shot at joining a union.

The Employee Free Choice Act would restore some balance between labor and management by allowing workers to choose whether to join a union by signing union cards or through secret ballot, rather than letting management dictate the process. Labor laws have been so weakened over the last three decades that today one in four companies goes so far as to illegally fire workers for trying to form a union.

The imbalance between labor and management is evidenced by the ever widening income gap between the very wealthy and most Americans. Some 60 percent of our country’s wealth lies in the hands of the richest five percent of us.

It is not just that President Obama and top economists, such as Nobel winner Paul Krugman, support the Employee Free Choice Act as a way to rebuild the middle class. It’s that nearly 60 million Americans want to join a union but can’t, and fewer than 100,000 workers took part in a secret ballot elections last year. Revitalizing our economy depends on restoring our middle class, and restoring our middle class means we have to steer past the roadblocks that are holding back so many workers. The Employee Free Choice Act would help us navigate this terrain by allowing workers to unionize if they choose to, and in the process improve their lot and our economy as well.

Editor’s note: Fishman is president of 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union