Paul Pimentel from the Sheet Metal Workers is liveblogging a hearing on the Employee Free Choice Act in front of the Education and Labor committee of the US House of Representatives. These hearings and the trajectory this bill takes in the US House are going to be very important for the economic future of middle class Americans because it helps guarantee them a choice on whether they join a union, in a way that they can’t be easily retaliated against by management. On the House side there’s no better advocate than Rep. George Miller, the chair of the committee.
The title to this post is obviously a bit tongue in cheek since committee hearings are usually fairly slow and boring. Though in this case I suspect that we’ll hear stories from workers and organizers about the retaliation they’ve had to endure in order to try to organize a union. When workers try to organize a bargaining unit the retaliation that they often suffer from management is almost always punitive.
