Tale of Two Workers Shows Need for Employee Free Choice Act

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2007/04/22/tale-of-two-workers-shows-need-for-employee-free-choice-act/

Tale of Two Workers Shows Need for Employee Free Choice Act

Two workers, Asela Espiritu from California and Dan Luevano from Colorado, stopped by the AFL-CIO building in Washington, D.C., this week to talk about what happened when they and their co-workers sought to form unions and win a better life. They were in the District of Columbia for the annual Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Awards, given by the worker advocacy group American Rights at Work. Espiritu and Luevano’s stories couldn’t have been more different.


Daniel Luevano

It’s all because Espiritu’s freedom to organize was respected by her employer, while the opposite was true for Luevano. The contrast between the two is another powerful example of why it’s so vital to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, which will level the playing field for millions of workers like Luevano seeking to form unions. The U.S. House passed the Employee Free Choice Act on March 1, and it’s now in the Senate.


Asela Espiritu

Espiritu is a registered nurse at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center-Orange County in Anaheim. After patients are out of surgery, she cares for them in the recovery room. Espiritu says when she and her colleagues sought to join United Nurses Association of California/Union of Health Care Professionals (UNAC/UHCP), which is part of AFSCME,

We were treated decently by the management. We organized our union without resistance from them.

That’s because Kaiser has a nationwide policy of neutrality in union organizing campaigns—unlike the union-busting practices of many employers who try to intimidate, harass and even fire employees who want a union—and Kaiser also respects majority representation (card-check). In other words, if a majority of workers in a Kaiser facility sign cards saying they want to be represented by a union, they get their union fair and square, without having to go through the meat grinder-like National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) process.

FULL story at link.