78% of the public supports the Employee Free Choice Act

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

A hat tip to Tula Connell at Firedoglake blog for this post Seventy-Eight Percent of Public Support Employee Free Choice Act. She writes that:

[D]espite the $200 million being spent by Big Business on fighting the Employee Free Choice Act, the public still overwhelmingly supports it.

We released a survey today that shows 78 percent of the public wants to see legislation that protects workers' freedom to form unions and bargain for a better life—the basic goal of the Employee Free Choice Act.

The survey, conducted Dec. 4–10 for the AFL-CIO by Peter D. Hart Research Associates, found:

  • 75 percent of those surveyed support recognizing a union when a majority of workers have signed up in support.
  • 64 percent support strengthening penalties against companies who illegally intimidate or fire workers who are trying to form a union.
  • 61 percent favor binding arbitration if a company will not agree to a first contract. (This provision had the highest number of respondents who weren’t sure how they felt about it.)

Support for the Employee Free Choice Act crosses party and state lines, with 74 percent of those who identify as moderate or liberal Republicans in favor. Conservative Republicans were the only group not expressing majority support.

Those surveyed were told arguments for and against the bill, including the falsehood spread by opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act that it would take away the secret ballot (it wouldn't). Support remains steady, even when those surveyed heard messages from both supporters and opponents of the bill.

The survey found that most people don't realize the extent to which management fights workers' efforts to form unions. That matters because the more people realize employers harass and intimidate workers, the more they support the Employee Free Choice Act.

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In 2006, long before the current economic disaster, another survey Hart conducted for us found that 60 million workers would join a union if they could. As the collapse of wages, the lack of health care and retirement security spreads throughout the nation's working and middle class, the need for the standard of living attainable through union membership becomes all the more clear.

So stick it in your ear "Save Our Secret Ballot," Heritage Foundation, Goldwater Institute and Americans for Tax Reform. Working Americans are not buying your campaign of lies and deceit.

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1 thought on “78% of the public supports the Employee Free Choice Act”

  1. I don’t dispute that real wages have suffered in the US, that health care is certainly no better than it was 10 years ago or that retirement security is no better than it was 10 years ago. I have little faith that unions can improve this scenario. Until the government stops spending money subsidizing the oil industry and the national defence of South Korea, Japan, Germany and various and sundry countries whose name isn’t “the United States of America” the US economy isn’t going to get better.

    I’ve known happy union workers but presuming that unionization is going to help employees whose employers are nearly insolvent in the first place isn’t the solution. I don’t see that UAW members at GM and Chrysler will be better off if GM and Chrysler go under.

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