Employee Free Choice Act, H.R. 800

We all know how important the right to belong to a union is to our nation's railroad employees. Can you imagine what the Carriers would do to our engineers and trainmen without the BLET negotiating for fair and safe work conditions, health and welfare benefits, hours of service restrictions, and fair wages? We must take action now to protect our right to belong to a union and to help the 60 million other workers in America who want to join unions but whose efforts are routinely blocked by employers. The current laws are too weak to protect these workers. This legislation, if enacted into law, would also protect those shortline railroad employees, some of whom have had their employment terminated for actively seeking to organize.

The House Education and Labor Committed voted 26-19 in favor of advancing the Employee Free Choice Act (H.R. 800), which was introduced Feb. 5 and has the bipartisan support of 233 co-sponsors. The Committee then voted late Wednesday to send the bill to the full House for a vote in the coming months.

The Teamsters, in partnership with other Change to Win unions and union-friendly organizations across America are participating in a coordinated effort to contact members of Congress by telephone. Please call 1-866-699-9243 on Monday, February 26, to urge your U.S. Representatives to support this important legislation that would allow workers to make their own uncoerced decisions on whether or not to form a union. If you would rather call your representatives directly, you can find their contact information at:

Member Web Site Listing (by State) - United States House of Representatives, 110th Congress, 1st Session.

To find out if your representative is already on board, see the list of co-sponsors.

Also, please be sure to pass this information along to all members of your auxiliary right away. We need everyone's voices on this one!

 THANK YOU!!!

Sereena Hogan

BLET Auxiliary - National 2nd Vice President/Asst. NLR

8720 N. Myrtle Drive, Tucson, AZ 85704

520-297-0944, e-mail: vp3sereena@aol.com

The following is from the AFL-CIO website:

It's Time to Restore Workers' Freedom to Form Unions.

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.

But the current system for forming unions and bargaining is broken. Every day, corporations deny workers the freedom to decide for themselves whether to form unions to bargain for a better life. They routinely intimidate, harass, coerce and even fire workers who try to form unions and bargain for economic well-being.

The Employee Free Choice Act (H.R. 800), supported by a bipartisan coalition in Congress, would level the playing field for workers and employers and help rebuild America's middle class. It would restore workers' freedom to choose a union by:

- Establishing stronger penalties for violation of employee rights when workers seek to form a union and during first-contract negotiations.

- Providing mediation and arbitration for first-contract disputes.

- Allowing employees to form unions by signing cards authorizing union representation.