On tour for the Employee free Choice Act.

[Kdillard]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stewart-acuff/on-tour-for-the-employee_b_191047.html



From meetings with Democratic state legislators in the Montana state capitol to engaging state political leaders in Denver, Louisiana, Nebraska, Arkansas to town hall meetings all across America to meetings with faith leaders from Montana to Louisiana to phone banks and letter writing gatherings to actions by civil rights leaders to debates with union busters in Alaska, New York and Baton Rouge to a Dr. King memorial in Omaha, Nebraska to rallies and marches in Pennsylvania, tens of thousands of working folks and their allies created the largest and deepest grassroots legislative blitz in American labor history.

We gathered at almost 400 events to send the loudest possible message to the United States Senate: "We demand and expect you to pass the Employee Free Choice Act now." We made 100,000 phone calls and delivered 50,000 handwritten letters. All of this occurred over the last two weeks during the Congressional spring recess.

The American labor movement and corporate America are locked in the biggest, most high stakes legislative fight in two generations.

The Labor Movement is determined to pass the Employee Free Choice Act to restore the freedom of workers to form unions and bargain collectively, to end 30 years of stagnant and declining wages, to strengthen and deepen the middle class and to end the corporate assault on workers when they try to form unions.

The last day of the tour began with a 45-minute drive-time interview on statewide NPR. We got a surprising number of pro-union, pro-Employee Free Choice Act calls. From there we went to a debate with another union buster hosted by the League of Women Voters. Both debates on the tour were filmed. We hope to get them up on You Tube and The Huffington Post.

Now the recess is over, but the action isn't. The Steelworkers and the Communications Workers and other unions are greatly increasing the heat on Republican Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania. He had been a co-sponsor of the legislation, but recently announced he opposed it after another Republican announced he will challenge Specter in the primary.

I go to Alaska next week, then back to Arkansas.






Kudos and boo to our media for not giving this issue enough air time. I will be looking out for the debates on youtube. Make sure they spread like wildfire.

[Kdillard]

1. kick just a little reminder of what has been going on to support

this legislation and if you haven't already please write. I can't believe we got crappy teabaggers and there was no coverage of this that I could see. No newspaper no television.