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Women’s Issues
Associate Director, Media Relations
snadeau@americanprogress.org
Vice President, Communications
jcusick@americanprogress.org
Director, Federal Affairs
mshepherd@americanprogress.org
Associate Director, State and Local Government Affairs
elofgren@americanprogress.org
Without strong unions, our entire community pays a heavy price: Wages lag, race and gender pay gaps widen and insecurity and poverty increases. Democracy suffers, in the workplace and beyond it. That is why more than 200 members of the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senators have co-sponsored the Employee Free Choice Act, which would allow workers to form unions without the obstacles employers now use to block workers’ free choice. This event highlights the benefits that workers and the economy in general can hope to reap from stronger legal protections to form and join unions.
Reports and Other Resources:
Human Rights Watch, Unfair Advantage: Workers’ Freedom of Association in the United States Under International Human Rights Standards.
Bruce Nissen and Mary Beth Maxwell, “Some of Them Are Brave.” American Rights At Work report.
Lawrence Mishel with Matthew Walters, Economic Policy Institute Briefing Paper, “How Unions Help All Workers.”
AFL-CIO Issue Brief, “The Silent War.”
The Employee Free Choice Act
American Rights at Work: Employee Free Choice Act
Paula Voos, “Democracy and Industrial Relations,” IRRA Presidential Address, January 4, 2004.
John Logan, “Consultants, Lawyers and the ‘Union Free’ Movement in the USA Since the 1970s.” Industrial Relations Journal 33:3 – 2002.
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