Our Issues - Employee Free Choice Act
Free Choice Core Message to Members
1. Working families are struggling to make ends meet. Wages are dropping, health costs are rising, pensions are disappearing, and we are in danger of losing our middle class.
2. Under today’s broken laws, working people are powerless to bargain for better wages, while CEOs demand contracts for themselves and get golden parachutes for driving their companies into the ground.
3. Workers need new laws that level the playing field and ensure the freedom to form unions and bargain for better wages and benefits. Union members make 30 percent more and are far more likely to have health care and pensions than nonunion workers. With the free choice to form unions, working people can counterbalance corporate power and rebuild our middle class.
KEY POINTS
• Our economy is in shambles, and the wage gap between corporate executives and working people has never been wider. Corporations and CEOs hold all the cards in today’s economy, and working families are left to struggle with the economy that is left behind.
• Unions are the single best tool to create an economy that works for all. Workers who belong to unions earn 30 percent more than nonunion workers. They are 59 percent more likely to have employer-provided health coverage and four times more likely to have pensions.
• More than half of U.S. workers—nearly 60 million—say they would join a union right now if they could. But not enough get the chance because of today’s company-dominated system that robs workers of their freedom to make their own decision. Companies routinely intimidate, harass, coerce and even fire people who try to form unions. This is an urgent problem for workers, blocking their free will and their ability to improve their economic well-being.
• The benefits of economic growth can never be broadly shared unless working people regain the free choice to bargain with their companies for a better life.
