Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN), February 20, 2007, Tuesday

Copyright 2007 Star Tribune

All Rights Reserved

Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN)

February 20, 2007 Tuesday

Metro Edition

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 10A

HEADLINE: A level playing field for American workers;

Congress needs to modernize federal labor law.

BODY:

In 1934 a series of violent strikes swept through American cities, including San Francisco and Minneapolis, producing such a wave of beatings, arrests and shootings that Congress decided there had to be a better way for Americans to form unions. It passed the Wagner Act, which gave workers the right to vote for unions and created the National Labor Relations Board to enforce fair collective bargaining.

Yet today, enforcement of federal labor law has decayed so badly that Americans might think they're back in the 1930s. Every year thousands of workers are illegally fired for union activity. Unfair-labor-practice complaints pile up at the labor board for months and seldom result in consequential penalties. "Intimidation, harassment and surveillance have become routine elements of the organizing process, so much so that fewer than a third of those attempting to organize succeed in gaining representation under a collective bargaining agreement,'' Cornell University professor Kate Bronfenbrenner has written.

Congress has waited far too long to correct this imbalance, but this year it has the perfect opportunity in a bill sponsored by Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., that would streamline union elections and put some teeth back in federal labor law.

Business lobbyists have denounced Miller's bill as an effort to rig workplace elections in unions' favor. Actually, the Employee Free Choice Act would do the opposite. It would give employees more choice, reduce meddling by unions and employers, and require independent arbitration if the parties are unable to negotiate their first contract.

It's no coincidence, then, that Miller's bill has attracted support from several Republican members of the House and a number of prominent church groups. They recognize, as mainstream America once did, that unions can provide a measure of economic security, reduce inequality and build a nation's middle class. Of course many Americans wouldn't join a union if given a fair chance. But that chance is something they deserve.

PLAYING HARDBALL

In 1994 a commission headed by former Labor Secretary John Dunlop found that one in four employers illegally fired union activists during organizing campaigns, and that one in three engaged in illegal "surface bargaining" to avoid negotiating contracts with unionized employees.