Goals
Build support for the Employee Free Choice Act
Time period notes
Time period
Country
Location Description
Methods in 1st segment
Methods in 2nd segment
Methods in 4th segment
Methods in 6th segment
Segment Length
Leaders
Partners
Local Unions
Local Universities
Involvement of social elites
Opponents
Pro Business Lobby
Moderate Democratic Represenatives
Nonviolent responses of opponent
Lobbying against the Employee Free Choice Act
Campaigner violence
Repressive Violence
Cluster
Classification
Group characterization
Groups in 1st Segment
Groups in 5th Segment
Segment Length
Success in achieving specific demands/goals
Survival
Growth
Total points
Notes on outcomes
Database Narrative
The AFL-CIO, the largest federation of unions in the United States, moved to counteract the shrinking union strength and the ever growing corporate power via legislation, the Employee Free Choice Act. Andy Levin and Stewart Acuff, two veteran union organizers, spearheaded the effort. In the summer of 2003, Acuff and Levin agreed on what the act would entail. It would have three key components: the right to card checks, harsher penalties against employers who violated labor laws, and the right for workers to seek arbitration and mediation if they could not negotiate a first contract with their employer. The card checks meant that a union would be recognized by the National Labor Relations Board after authorization cards signed by a majority of workers had been submitted. The card checks would not replace elections, but would offer a parallel system to unionize. Card checks would drastically shorten the amount of time required to unionize, and in the AFL-CIO’s view, make a fairer and more transparent unionization method.
Acuff stated that the first challenge that the Employee Free Choice Act would face would be to “pass the laugh test” and be taken seriously. On 21 November 2003, Senator Ted Kennedy (MA), one of the most influential liberals in the US Congress, and Congressman George Miller (CA) introduced the Employee Free Choice Act to Congress. Republicans and the business lobby immediately attacked the bill. Acuff and Levin recognized the need to legitimize the bill under the barrage of criticism from the right, and the two decided to organize as many pro-labor and pro-Employee Free Labor Act actions as possible across America on 10 December, International Human Rights Day. They intended to swamp media markets with coverage of the American labor movement.
Prior to Human Rights Day, the AFL-CIO coordinated and planned over 100 events with local partner organizers. These partners included prominent universities, unions, and centers of worship. They compiled all the events for the day on their website. Interested people could learn about events by state, and the blurbs for each event provided contact information for the lead organizer of every event.
While the bulk of the planned events happened on 10 December, many local organizations organized smaller events to raise awareness during the week leading up to Human Rights Day. Local partners in the Washington DC area took additional steps to raise awareness for the event. On 3 December, union members and their allies canvassed at twenty five metro stops during the morning commute. The flyers told commuters of the upcoming rallies and teach-ins on 10 December and the reason for them. In addition, campaigners also put up 14 banners on highway overpasses.
On 10 December 2003, events across America happened consistently throughout the day. Most states and major metropolitan areas had events. While the details of the different events varied, common events involved rallies, marches, candlelight vigils, teach ins, press conferences, and board hearings. The AFL-CIO managed to mobilize over 150,000 Americans at over 100 events across the United States.
The organizers of the events drew strong connections to human rights; they presented unionization as a right that had been violated in the United States. Amnesty International partnered in several of the AFL-CIO’s events, which helped frame the rallies and Employee Free Choice Act as a matter of human rights. Organizers also drew attention to the fact that union won the forty hour work week and the modern weekend. Their efforts to propagate positive news coverage worked, and many (at least a few dozen) news articles on the day mentioned the victories that unions had won for the working class in past decades.
Organizers designed many events to generate community wide support for the grievances of one section of the labor community. For example, in Nashville, Tennessee, community members rallied at Werthan Packaging Co to show support and solidarity with workers who had been trying to unionize for over a decade.
In many cities across the nation, Workers Rights Boards convened hearings local community leaders who fought for labor rights, and During these events on the 10th, community members could share with local labor leaders their experiences and troubles trying to organize their work places. Most of these hearings were followed by a march and or rally.
Most of the local events did not explicitly focus on the Employee Free Choice Act, rather the events focused on worker rights, human rights and the link between the two. Many of the teach-ins focused on highlighting obstacles and abuse workers faced while trying to organize. The handful of actions that directly focused on the Employee Free Choice Act were mass lobbying efforts to get communities’ representatives to support the act. For example, the Vermont AFL-CIO marched to their Senators’ offices to deliver letters asking for the senators to support the Free Choice Act.
News coverage was extensive as local and national news organizations wrote stories on the actions on Human Rights Day. In addition, supporters of the Employee Free Labor Act published a barrage of editorials and op-eds. Mark Weisbrot penned at least three op-eds in support of the act in different newspapers.
While Human Rights Day and the AFL-CIO events received some follow up coverage in the following days, it was mainly in publications that only published weekly, and overall the media quickly lost interest. However, the Human Rights Day actions managed to raise enough attention that over 100 members of the US House of Representatives signed onto the bill as co-sponsors and Acuff stated that “the legislation had passed ‘the laugh test.’”
After 10 December, the AFL-CIO returned to its more traditional methods of lobbying and stopped using nonviolent action to help support the Employee Free Choice Act. Acuff led a continued media blitz and gave countless speeches supporting the act. The federation met with senators and representatives for the next six years pushing for the act. In 2007, the Act had majority support in both the House and Senate. However, the Senate majority did not have 60 supporters, the number required to break the threatened Republican filibuster. By 2009, under President Obama, the Democrats gathered the required numbers to pass the bill; however, due to the combination of the Great Recession and its economic pressures and pro-business lobbyists, a few moderate Democrats withdrew their support. The bill failed to pass in that session of Congress, and it was not reintroduced once the Republicans took control of the house in 2010.
Sources
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Anon. 2003. “60 rally at congressman’s office for human rights.” Erie Times, 11 December. Retrieved 25 March 2019. https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/news/document-view?p=AWNB&t=&sort=YMD_date%3AD&fld-base-0=alltext&maxresults=20&val-base-0=%20%22Employee%20Free%20Choice%20Act%22%20&fld-nav-0=YMD_date&val-nav-0=january%201%202003%20-%20december%2031%202003&docref=news/0FF5FE2E4CC9DE7A
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Weisbrot, Mark. 2003. “Unions Losing Basic Rights to Organize as Employers Counterattack.” Sun Herald, December 10.
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Additional Notes
This source is incredibly useful and has almost all events sanctioned by the AFL-CIO listed.