Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi introduces former Blue Diamond worker Ivo Camilo at the San Francisco Labor Council. Photo by Tom Price.


by Marcy Rein

The U.S. House of Representatives stands poised to pass the biggest labor law reform in almost 60 years. House approval of the Employee Free Choice Act (H. R. 800) will set off a fierce fight that could color the next few political seasons as the Democrats seek to flex their majority.

“In November the American people asked for a new direction,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) told a hometown press conference in support of the Act on Feb. 21. “This is the beginning of that.”

Since the AFL-CIO launched an all-out push for the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) Dec. 8, the ILWU has helped fuel the effort. Larry Newsome from the Blue Diamond workers’ organizing committee appeared at the December kick-off rally. His colleague Ivo Camilo was one of two workers to testify at the first hearing on EFCA in the 110th Congress.

Camilo addressed the House Subcommittee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Feb. 8. He told the panel how Blue Diamond found a flimsy excuse to fire him in 2005 because he supported his co-workers’ effort to join ILWU warehouse Local 17. 

“I worked at Blue Diamond Growers for 35 years,” Camilo said. “On April 20, two supervisors—one in front and one in back—escorted me out of the building like a criminal. The next day I was terminated.”

The National Labor Relations Board found Blue Diamond guilty of more than 20 labor law violations, including the firings of Camilo and another union supporter, Mike Flores. The two walked back into the almond plant almost exactly a year after Camilo got sacked.

Keith Ludlum, who worked at the Smithfield hog plant in South Carolina, was not so lucky. He lost his job in 1994, shortly after the Smithfield workers started organizing. The NLRB ordered Smithfield to re-hire him. The company appealed, and lost. Ludlum got back to work 13 years after he got fired.

Smithfield broke the law so badly during the workers’ first union election in 1994 that the NLRB ordered a re-run in 1997. Workers going in to vote that time had to run a gauntlet of armed police.

“County sheriffs in full battle gear with shotguns lined the long driveway into the plant, all the way up to the election booth areas,” Ludlum told the House panel. “Managers stood next to them in the voting room, showing their authority.”

Backers of the Employee Free Choice Act want to make sure other workers don’t have to go through such trials to exercise their legal right to join a union. The Act would:

• Require fines for employers who break the law during organizing drives;

• Require the NLRB to immediately seek court orders telling employers to re-hire workers who get fired for supporting the union;

• Make majority sign-up (“card-check”) rather than election the standard way for workers to decide on union representation; and

• Require mediation and binding arbitration to ensure that workers get a first contract quickly. Either the employer or the union could request mediation if they haven’t reached agreement within 90 days. If the mediation doesn’t work in 30 days, they would have to go to binding arbitration.

Much of the debate over the Act has swirled around the majority sign-up clause, but the first-contract section also addresses a huge flaw in the current law.

“The mediation and arbitration provisions included in the Free Choice Act are important because there are so many cases in which you get recognition but no contract,” said William Carder, recently retired after 36 years as a lawyer representing workers and unions, including the ILWU. (Some 45 percent of newly organized workers do not get first contracts, according to the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service’s 2004 annual report.)

The original National Labor Relations Act included few restrictions on unions when it passed in 1935, Carder said. Those came in with the infamous Taft-Hartley Act in 1948 and continued with the Landrum-Griffin Act in 1959.

“The Employee Free Choice Act is the most significant change in labor law since Taft-Hartley, and the most in the spirit of the original Act,” Carder said.
The Act had the backing of a bi-partisan group of 233 co-sponsors when Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez) introduced it Feb. 5. It passed out of committee Feb. 14 and is due to hit the House floor when Congress comes back after its Presidents’ Day recess. With more than half the 435 House members behind it, it should pass, said ILWU Legislative Director Lindsay McLaughlin.

“This will be a heavy lift in the Senate,” McLaughlin said. “It won’t work unless there is a mass movement behind it.” 

EFCA’s opponents, led by the National Chamber of Commerce, can be expected to unleash a multi-million dollar campaign, said Kimberly Freeman of the pro-worker advocacy group American Rights at Work.

“The Chamber spent $24.5 million on lobbying the federal government in 2004, the most recent year for which we have figures,” Freeman said. Now the Chamber belongs to the “Coalition for A Democratic Workplace,” a classic “Astroturf” (fake grass-roots) group. The Coalition claims to include rank-and-file workers as well as leaders of national associations and its Web page mimics a workers’ rights site. But you don’t have to go farther than the “A’s” on its list of backers to see its real sponsors, the likes of the American Hotel and Lodging Association, the American Hospital Association and Associated Builders and Contractors.

If the Free Choice Act passes the Senate, President Bush will surely veto it, Vice President Dick Cheney told the National Assn. of Manufacturers. (Reuters News Service, Feb. 15.)

“We are looking at a multi-year project to get this passed,” McLaughlin said. “If we have a good election in 2008, we can do it. It is critical that working people understand this is part of the political landscape for the next few years.”

The AFL-CIO declared Feb. 19-25 a “Week of Action” to thank Congress members for supporting EFCA and bolster them against the opposition attacks to come. The Federation coordinated events in 93 communities involving 130 members of Congress. ILWU members, staff, and workers active in organizing drives participated in these events in Honolulu, Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Francisco, and Olympia, WA.

Flanked by several co-workers, Tim Patrick told the Los Angeles press conference what the workers at Rite Aid’s Lancaster distribution center have gone through since they began organizing last April to join ILWU warehouse Local 26. Rite Aid has fired five union supporters, suspended and disciplined many more and routinely dissed them as “union pushers.” 

Blue Diamond workers took part in the Sacramento and San Francisco events. ILWU warehouse Local 6 passed a resolution supporting EFCA at its annual convention Feb. 24 in Oakland. IBU member Charlie Finger from McCall Oil and Chemical spoke at the Portland roundtable.

About 20 ILWU and IBU members met with Rep. Jay Inslee at the Washington State Labor Council Legislative Conference in Olympia, just after he testified before a committee of the state legislature.

“He said it’s going to happen,” said ILWU Legislative Committee Chair Max Vekich Jr. of Marine Clerks’ Local 52. “The Legislative Committee will meet in March and decide on actions to recommend to the Longshore Caucus, the officers and the International Executive Board.

“This legislation is about collective bargaining rights in the workplace. You can’t get more basic than that,” Vekich said. “It’s a key to the survival of organized labor in this country.”

To find out how you can help pass the Employee Free Choice Act, e-mail washdc@ilwu.org or visit www.employeefreechoice.org.