President Haynes Responds to Anti-Employee Free Choice Act Op-Ed in Boston Herald

November 25, 2008

To the Editor,
How embarrassing for Peter Moser and Sheryl Eisenberg that their central argument for opposing the Employee Free Choice Act, that it "would eliminate an employee's right to vote in a secret ballot election," is flat-out untrue. ("Act to form a more imperfect union," Nov. 23) Had Moser and Eisenberg done their homework, they would have known that the Employee Free Choice Act allows workers to make the choice to form a union once a majority of employees have certified that they want one, or through an election should only 30 percent of workers demand secret ballots. Right now employers get to choose which method their workers get to use to organize.

Or perhaps Moser and Eisenberg did do their homework, and out of desperation chose to spew forth their outright lies about the bill once they realized that as attorneys at a union-busting law firm, the Employee Free Choice Act threatens their job security. In the run-up to a secret ballot election, employers are the only ones who frequently use intimidation tactics. They hire union-busting law firms such as the employer of these two propagandists, Hirsch Roberts Weinstein LLP, who advise their clients to hold mandatory one-on-one and captive audience meetings to intimidate their employees out of union support. And if that doesn't work, more than a quarter of employers will fire a worker for union support during an organizing campaign, based largely on the advice of union-busting lawyers like the two the Herald allowed to masquerade as guest columnists. Though illegal, the enforcement measures and penalties are so weak that employers can painlessly factor the risk into the cost of staying union-free. The Employee Free Choice Act will also impose meaningful fines for employers who break the law.

By arguing against the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act through misleading sound bites, Peter Moser and Sheryl Eisenberg are selfishly trying to preserve their own unscrupulous profession at the expense of real working people who are simply looking for economic security. The Employee Free Choice Act restores the right of workers to organize free of employer oppression and takes the decision out of employers' hands and puts it back into the hands of employees. No wonder Moser and Eisenberg, and the employers who bankroll them, are so nervous about it.

Sincerely,
Robert J. Haynes
President, Massachusetts AFL-CIO
389 Main Street
Malden, MA 02148

To read the original Boston Herald op-ed column, click here.