The Employee Free Choice Act

What is the Employee Free Choice Act?

The current labor law system is broken. Corporations routinely intimidate, harass, coerce and fire people who try to organize unions-and today's labor law is powerless to stop them. Every day, corporations deny working people the freedom to make their own choice about whether to have a union.

The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) respects that the right to join a union is a fundamental freedom, just like freedom of speech or religion, and that employees should be able to do so without interference from management.

Majority Rules

Under EFCA, if a majority of all employees sign cards indicating support for a union the employer is required to recognize the union so long as the workers' choice is certified by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The current process is not working because of a dramatic rise in coercive and hostile action by employers against employees trying to unionize.

Fair Resolution of Contract Disputes

When workers decide they want to be represented by a union, employers can drag out the contract negotiation process for years. EFCA creates a fair process for resolving contract disputes.

Strong Remedies to Protect Workers' Rights

Currently, employers face only minimal penalties if they violate employees' rights who are trying to form a union -- essentially a minor cost of doing business. EFCA would level the playing field by requiring the NLRB to take legal action to reinstate workers fired for union activity.

Opposition to EFCA

Corporate front groups are waging a major campaign to stop the Employee Free Choice Act. They do not want workers to have the freedom to choose for themselves whether to bargain through unions for better wages, benefits and working conditions. The anti-union network includes discredited groups such as the Center for Union Facts, led by lobbyist Richard Berman, who is infamous for fighting against drunk driving laws and consumer and health protections, and the National Right to Work Committee and Foundation, the country's oldest organization dedicated exclusively to destroying unions.

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Freedom of Choice

• Employees are fired in one-quarter of private-sector union organizing campaigns
• 78 percent of companies require supervisors to deliver anti-union messages to the workers whose jobs and pay they control
• Even after workers successfully form a union, one-third of the time they are not able to get a contract