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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 9, 2009
2:22 PM

CONTACT: AFL-CIO

Alison Omens/Eddie Vale (202) 637-5018

America's Workers Hold Over 100 Grassroots Events Across the Country Urging Congress to Pass the Employee Free Choice Act

Workers Also Came to D.C. to Tell Their Stories Directly to Their Representatives and to Testify Before the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee

WASHINGTON - March 9 - Starting today, and continuing throughout the week, America’s workers will hold over 100 grassroots events across the country urging congress to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, which will restore workers’ freedom to join a union and bargain for a better life.

Workers also are coming to D.C. to tell their stories directly to their Representatives and to testify before the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions Committee.

Billy Mason, an aerospace worker and former U.S. Marine from Virginia, who came to D.C. to meet with his Representatives said, “For the last 24 years I have worked at the same plant and watched as our good jobs turned into jobs where we are falling behind on wages and benefits and living check to check. Our only hope for restoring worker moral and holding business accountable is to allow the plant workers to organize and form a union.”

Deborah Kelly, a lineman apprentice who came all the way from Alaska to testify before the Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee, said, “As a lineman apprentice for the Chugach Electric Association I work hard every day, in sometimes dangerous conditions, to provide power to the Anchorage, Alaska area. I am truly honored to testify before Congress about how I have benefited from joining a union. Thanks to my union, I work with the most highly trained people in the industry and I know will come home safe every night.”

At the local grassroots, events workers will be writing letters and calling their Senators, urging them to pass the Employee Free Choice Act. There will be over 100 events across the country including over 40 events just in Alaska, Ark., Calif., Colo., Neb., N.C., Maine, Mont., Pa., Va., and Wis.

Passing the Employee Free Choice Act is crucial to building an economy that works for everyone and to growing the middle class. It will allow workers to have a voice at work and to bargain collectively for higher wages, benefits, and job security. The bill would allow workers to join a union through majority sign up and take away the right of corporations to demand a sham ballot election, giving the choice of majority sign-up or an election to the workers.

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The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) is a voluntary federation of 56 national and international labor unions. The AFL-CIO union movement represents 10.5 million members, including 2 million members in Working America, its new community affiliate. We are teachers and truck drivers, musicians and miners, firefighters and farm workers, bakers and bottlers, engineers and editors, pilots and public employees, doctors and nurses, painters and laborers-and more.

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