Passage of the Employee Free Choice Act could open up residential construction worker organizing to the nation’s building trades unions, the head of the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department says.
The election of labor-backed Democrat Barack Obama to the White House and increased pro-worker majorities in Congress means “We are finally at the point…where we do not have to fight the battles of the past,” department President Mark Ayers told his 3,000-person legislative conference in his May 18 keynote address.
“But it doesn’t stop there,” he said, referring to campaigns against GOP adminis-trations that wanted to destroy the Davis-Bacon prevailing wage law and other worker protections. “This president, our president, is backing the Employee Free Choice Act.”
That legislation, now the subject of intense lobbying by both workers and business on Capitol Hill, “will do more to strengthen the right to organize than any law since the original 1935 National Labor Relations Act,” Ayers added.
“In our case, it would help us organizing in construction markets that have eluded us far too long now. That’s why we all share an enormous stake in seeing this legislation become law,” he declared.
The law, which would help level the playing field between workers and bosses in organizing and bargaining, was item #1 in the briefing booklet BCTD distributed to each delegate. All headed to Congress to lobby during the rest of their May 17-20 confab.
In an interview after his speech, Ayers said specifically that passage of the law would help building trades unions organize residential construction workers. “God only knows they need it,” he said of those workers, many of them exploited immigrants.
“Historically, our hands have been tied” in organizing home construction workers, Ayers elaborated. “By the time we get to a job site, get the (union election authorization) cards signed, and get the election date set, the job is done and the workers dispersed.”
A key section of the Employee Free Choice Act, and the section that has drawn the most business opposition, would shorten those steps, by mandating that when the union gets a verified majority of workers at a site to sign the cards, the workers -- not the bosses -- may choose either to hold a National Labor Relations Board-run election or to demand and get automatic recognition of the union as their bargaining agent.
Bosses, including anti-union construction companies, fear that provision, Ayers told his delegates. “From the ABC (Associated Builders and Contractors) and the Chamber of Commerce on down, every anti-union corporate interest in America made it plain their #1 legislative priority is to stop EFCA,” he said.
Ayers had no estimate on how many more workers the building trades unions could organize should the law pass. He said he heard AFL-CIO-wide estimates of organizing 1 million new workers nationwide in the first year after it’s approved. Unions now have 16.1 million workers nationwide, or one of every eight, federal figures show. Construction unions have 15.6% of all construction workers, the data adds. Separate figures for residential construction were not included.
Other speakers at the conference included Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Rep. Frank LoBiondo, R-N.J., co-chair of the small House GOP Labor Caucus. Solis touted the construction jobs already created by the stimulus law in 3,000 projects in every state and territory, along with the “green jobs,” including construction jobs, the law envisions. She also promised “strong enforcement” of Davis-Bacon prevailing wage laws. “There’s a new sheriff in town,” Solis said.
All three backed the Employee Free Choice Act, but neither lawmaker said when it would get a House vote. And Solis implied it hasn’t come up yet before Obama, who also backs it. “I’m looking forward to working with this new White House to make the strongest case for why we need the Employee Free Choice Act,” Solis said.