CAMPAIGN FOR AMERICA’S FUTURE URGES SUPPORT FOR EMPLOYEE FREE CHOICE ACT

WASHINGTON – The Campaign for America’s Future today issued a statement in support of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), introduced today by Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA), a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and Representative George Miller (D-CA), the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee.

STATEMENT OF ROBERT BOROSAGE, CO-DIRECTOR, CAMPAIGN FOR AMERICA’S FUTURE

President Barack Obama intends to revive America’s middle class. The centerpiece of any such effort must be the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).

The Employee Free Choice Act will help restore the right of workers to organize in this country. Over the last decades, that basic right has been shredded, as companies waged open warfare on union organizing, and administrations often failed to enforce the laws protecting that right.

But the Employee Free Choice Act isn't just about worker rights. It’s about whether we can return to an economy with a broad middle class. When unions represented 30% of the private economy, they won family wages, health care, pensions, paid vacations – the basics of middle class existence. Rising union wages and benefits helped lift the wages of non-union workers as well. America has never done much redistribution through taxes. We built a middle class because workers were able to win a decent share of the profits and productivity that they helped to generate. Unions were central to that.

The campaign on the Employee Free Choice Act will be fierce. Gaining 60 votes won't be easy. But we've tried an economy with weak unions – and that didn't work out so well. This is a fight that citizens across the country should join. It will be a critical building block of the new economy that we must construct from the ashes of the old.

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