The fight to pass the Employee Free Choice Act will be over the need to restore the middle class versus the need to preserve secret ballots. We know, of course, this is a false choice since the Employee Free Choice Act does both.

Our goal, however, is to make the public debate more about the middle class and less about secret ballots. Quite simply, we need to focus on what economists from Harvard, MIT, Duke, Princeton, Cornell, and Columbia agree on:

“An important reason for the shift from broadly-shared prosperity to growing inequality is the erosion of workers’ ability to form unions and bargain collectively."

"The Employee Free Choice Act is a critically important step in rebuilding our economy and strengthening our democracy by enhancing the voice of working people in the workplace.”

Check out the best arguments to use when educating our members and driving the public debate.  We’ll also fully dissect the other side's myth about how this legislation somehow eliminates secret ballots. Read on for our third Area Labor Federation President profile: Rick Howard IAM. Check out three positive letters to the editor published in the Richmond Times Dispatch and sign up to submit your own.

In solidarity,

Jim Leaman                                      Doris Crouse-Mays

President, Virginia AFL-CIO           Secretary-Treasurer, Virginia AFL-CIO