Editor's Note: Rite Aid warehouse workers in Lancaster, Calif., have been trying to organize a union at their workplace over the last three years only to face continual resistance and active disruption by management. Anemic U.S. labor laws make organizing difficult and company interference easy, but a bill being debated in Congress now, the Employee Free Choice Act, could level the playing field at a time when workers have their backs to the wall. Author David Bacon reports.

LANCASTER, Calif. – After months of a media war over the Employee Free Choice Act, the bill designed to make union organizing easier was finally introduced into Congress again this week. It has been debated before, but with a larger Democratic majority, its chances of passage are much greater today, and Pres. Barack Obama has said he’ll sign it. Employers, therefore, are fighting it as never before.

American workers shouldn’t have to drop their First Amendment and privacy rights at the workplace door.

Employers have the right to express their views on all subjects including religion, politics and unions. But they should not be allowed to force those views on employees under threat of losing their jobs. Wal-Mart recently sparked a fire storm of criticism when it was reported that they were holding mandatory employee meetings to “warn” employees of dire consequences if they vote for Barack Obama and Democrats in the 2008 elections.

The public is outraged. An employer’s position of power and influence over their employees’ livelihoods makes it just plain wrong for them to force their opinions on private matters of individual conscience.

One of our volunteers is working hard on making sure Teamsters-organized linen workers receive a fair contract. Since the workers of Tomlinson have been on strike, local activists have been targeting their clients, including Anthony's Restaurant, as a way of reaching the company. Here is the report from Teamsters 117:

Teamsters have represented the laundry industry in Seattle since the 1930’s.

All of the Linen companies in Western Washington are represented by the Teamsters.  As a result of years of bargaining and density in the industry Teamsters 117 bargains the linen contracts based on an industry standard. These are separately negotiated agreements that follow a pattern.  The pattern equalizes labor and benefit costs and forces linen industries to compete for accounts based on customer service or services.  Over the years linen drivers have been able to support their families and most retire after years of service in the industry with a respectable pension and retiree healthcare. 

Labor leaders and rank-and-file union members who work at The Boeing Co. will come to Olympia on Tuesday, Feb. 20 to testify in support of the Aerospace Incentive Accountability Act (HB 1828).  The legislation would require aerospace companies that are recipients of the $3.2 billion in tax incentives approved in 2003 to remain neutral and allow their employees to choose for themselves whether they want to organize a union.  

All supporters of the freedom to choose unionization without employer harassment and coercion are invited and encouraged to attend this important hearing and sign in supporting the bill.

The Aerospace Incentive Accountability Act addresses concerns that good Boeing jobs are being contracted out to aerospace firms that pay lower wages and offer fewer benefits, while these companies receive a major public subsidy intended to preserve Boeing jobs. There have been cases where these aerospace contractors have aggressively fought their employees' attempts to form unions.

UPDATE: The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Employee Free Choice Act today. This is the best news working families had in years.

Take a minute and thank your congress member if they voted yes, or (if they voted no) how embarrassed they should be for voting against this important legislation.

Watch Rep. George Miller's great floor speech about this bill.

America’s working people are struggling to make ends meet these days and our middle class is disappearing. The best opportunity working people have to get ahead economically is by uniting to bargain with their employers for better wages and benefits.

When Congress reconvenes in January, one of the first orders of business needs to be the Employee Free Choice Act. 

On April 19, 2005, a bipartisan coalition reintroduced into Congress the historic Employee Free Choice Act (S. 842 and H.R. 1696). The act would strengthen protections for workers’ freedom to choose by requiring employers to recognize a union after a majority of workers sign cards authorizing union representation. It also would provide for mediation and arbitration of first-contract disputes and authorize stronger penalties for violation of the law when workers seek to form a union. Shockingly, the Act never made it our of committee in the Republican-dominated Congress. This year should be different.

Last week, 1,000 union organizers marched down New Jersey avenue in Washington D.C. to the Capitol Building following the AFL-CIO's Organizing Summit. There they met another 1,000 union members who listened to speeches from Senator Edward Kennedy and AFL-CIO President John Sweeney calling for passage of the Act.

San Francisco has been a solidly union town since the historic 1934 maritime strike of sailors and longshoremen which turned into a citywide General Strike after two strikers were killed by police. The strikers' slogan then was, "An injury to one is an injury to all." Now, every July 5, "Bloody Thursday," West Coast ports close from the Canadian to the Mexican border to commemorate the six union members killed during the militant strike that forged the organized labor movement.

But is San Francisco still a union town?

For the first time since that 1934 strike, a nonunion maritime company has begun operating on the Embarcadero. Hornblower Cruises and Events, owned by Terry McRae, was awarded a 10-year contract by the National Park Service (NPS) last year to provide ferry service to Alcatraz Island. Some 50 workers, represented by the Inlandboatmen's Union (IBU) and the Masters, Mates and Pilots Union (MMP), with decent working conditions, wages and family health insurance, lost their jobs. They've been picketing, along with their supporters, at Pier 33 on the Embarcadero for the past two months, as McRae refuses to negotiate.

The Republican-dominated National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) today voted along party lines to slash long-time federal labor laws protecting workers’ freedom to form unions and opened the door for employers to classify millions of workers as supervisors. Under federal labor law, supervisors are prohibited from forming unions.

The NLRB ruled on three cases today, collectively known as “Kentucky River,” but it’s the lead case Oakwood Healthcare Inc. that creates a new definition of supervisor. Dozens of cases involving the definition of supervisor now before the NLRB will be sent back, with employers having the option to craft arguments that will meet the new definition of supervisor and limit the number of workers who can join a union.

Although the Oakwood decision covers only nurses, the expanded definition of superviors means up to 8 million workers,