Bronfenbrenner: Employee Free Choice Is Key for Women

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2009/02/26/bronfenbrenner-employee-free-choice-is-key-for-women/

by Seth Michaels, Feb 26, 2009

Cornell University’s Kate Bronfenbrenner, a leading scholars in labor studies, discusses the Employee Free Choice Act and the future of the union movement in the latest issue of The American Prospect.



In a great interview, Bronfenbrenner, whose research has detailed the pattern of corporate interference and intimidation that prevents workers from freely choosing a union, says the Employee Free Choice Act is critical to giving workers bargaining power and restoring balance in an economy that has been undermined by corporate greed. Says Bronfenbrenner:

The public has seen that deregulation and letting employers do whatever they want has hurt a lot of people. Corporate capital does not work in the interest of the public good. Letting them act without any restraint puts us where we are today. The National Labor Relations Act as it is now enforced is a poor piece of legislation. The Employee Free Choice Act is nothing more than making the law do what it was supposed to have been doing all along.

Bronfenbrenner, who is director of labor education research at Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, says increased access to a union membership and bargaining is especially important to women, for whom unions are a path to jobs that will help them support families, advance in their careers and improve their lives.

FULL story at link.