SEIU President Stern: EFCA Would Ensure That New Jobs Are Good Jobs

Washington, DC-- As President Obama laid out his latest plans to help the nation's unemployed millions, SEIU International President Andy Stern today called on Congress to implement the Employee Free Choice Act as a priority part of the President's job creation plan.

We need to take action now to ensure that the millions of jobs the President and Congress are working to create will be good jobs, with living wages, benefits like affordable, quality health care, and the right for workers to have a voice in the services they provide," said Stern. "Right now, we have an economy where CEOs would rather give another million-dollar bonus to their top executives than a one-dollar raise to their lowest-paid employees. The Employee Free Choice Act would help create an economy that works for everyone."

The Employee Free Choice Act is critical legislation that would allow workers to bargain with their employers for job security, better wages and benefits. The major principles of the bill are:

giving workers a real choice to form a union and bargain for better conditions; enforcing penalties when employers break the law; and stopping the endless delays that prevent workers from achieving a first contract with employers.

President Obama and Vice President Biden have offered strong and consistent support for the legislation, which was introduced into Congress on March 10, 2009.

"Working families are struggling--losing their jobs, their health care, and their retirement benefits. They're working harder than ever before, yet they're not able to share in the prosperity they helped create," said Anna Burger, SEIU Secretary-Treasurer. "To really fix this economy, we must rebuild the middle class. The solution is simple: create good jobs that support a family, so they buy more products and put money back into our economy. That's what the Employee Free Choice Act will do."

Leading economists have argued that passing the Employee Free Choice Act would be an important step in restoring our economy. In February 2009, 40 top economists, including 3 Nobel Laureates, placed a letter in the Washington Post in which they argued that one of the main reasons for our economic slump is the "erosion of workers' ability to form unions and bargain collectively," that shifted the wealth of our country from "broadly-shared prosperity" to "growing inequality."

Also in February, a report by the Center for American Progress Action Fund found that a modest increase in unionization rates would help restore the broken link between productivity and wage gains, pumping tens of billions of dollars into the U.S. economy. According to the report, "If unionization rates were the same as they were in 1983 and the current union wage premium remained constant, new union workers would earn an estimated $49.0 billion more in wages and salaries per year.

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