obama_efca_vid.jpg
President-elect Barack Obama strongly
supports the Employee Free
Choice Act.

So, despite 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.

In releasing the survey today, AFL-CIO Governmental Affairs Director Bill Samuel described the growing support for the bill in the U.S. House with all the newly elected members of Congress backing it and noted we are close to a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. The bill passed the House in 2007 but a Senate cloture vote kaboshed a vote there. We are moving full-speed ahead for passage early this year.

The corporate Big Bucks PR campaign didn’t make much difference in the elections, either. As Michael Whitney pointed out here in November, a poll taken in Senate battleground states for American Rights at Work showed:

In Colorado, Sen.-elect Mark Udall withstood millions of dollars of negative advertising, including three months of ads against his support of the bill. His final margin was three points higher than where he had been in the polls when the ads began.

The day after Oregon Sen.-elect Jeff Merkley won his primary, ads started airing to attack his support for the bill, and anti-worker forces spent almost $1 million to defeat him. As the ads continued, Merkley rose steadily in the polls.

In New Hampshire, Sen.-elect Jeanne Shaheen was one of the first candidates to face anti Employee Free Choice Act advertising. Despite spending $1.5 million in the tiny state of New Hampshire, the bill’s opponents failed to have an impact in this race.

As opponents see their cash spiraling down the drain, the desperation of their rhetoric ratchets up. Former Home Depot CEO Bernie Marcus described the Employee Free Choice Act as follows:

This is the demise of a civilization…if a retailer has not gotten involved with this, if he has not spent money on this election…he should be shot.

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.

Or we really will face the demise of civilization.