1650 Legislative Bulletin Archive

* * * Local 1650 Legislative Action Bulletin * * * 

            Please contact your U.S. Congress Representative and U.S. Senator regarding important to the wages, benefits, and pensions of HFCC faculty. 

Employee Free Choice Act

            The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) is designed to level the playing field in union-management relations – a playing field now heavily favoring management.  EFCA will permit employees to form unions upon achieving a majority of signed authorization cards, rather than through an election process, if they so choose.  Too often employers have stalled the election process and used the time to intimidate employees and fire those perceived as union supporters.  Since employers often drag out the negotiation of a first contract for years in hope of destroying a new union, EFCA also requires binding arbitration to resolve impasse in the negotiation of a Union’s first contract. 

            The viability of the union movement in this country is important to the nation because it generates and advances the middle class and, in turn, the economic health and social stability of the country.  The overall strength of the union movement is important to HFCC faculty because the achievement of middle class incomes, comprehensive health benefits, and sound pensions in the private sector made such possible to achieve in the public sector.  As union achievements in wages, benefits, and pensions disappear in the private sector – and they are rapidly doing so – it will be impossible to maintain them in the public sector.  No elected official  will support these things for federal, State, county, municipal, or HFCC employees if their private sector constituents do not have them.

             Do not believe for an instant that HFCC faculty are immune from the “race to the bottom” already well underway in the private sector.  There will be no island of economic security in higher education or at HFCC absent a vibrant middle class in the private sector. The decline of the middle class – the nation’s true economic engine – parallels the decline of private sector unions.  Support of EFCA it is vital to preserving the nation’s middle class and, in turn, the economic standing of HFCC faculty.

                                                                                                            John McDonald

 More information on the AFCA at the AFL-CIO web site

* * * Local 1650 Legislative Action Bulletin * * *