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Restoring the Middle Class

Faith, Community Leaders, Workers Rally for the Employee Free Choice Act

SEIU Local 1, Jobs with Justice, AFSCME, the Central Indiana Labor Council and faith and community leaders rallied in Indianapolis for the freedom to unite at work.

For generations, America has been known as the land of opportunity.  A place where  everyone could work hard, enter the middle class and hand off the promise of a better life to their children.

But today, that promise is at risk.  We are out of balance:

  • Billionaires make more in an hour than many working people earn in an entire year.
  • A majority of working people believe their children will be WORSE off economically.  
  • In the richest country on earth, people with no health insurance die for the simple reason they are poor.
  • Corporations threaten to abandon our country if they are asked to pay their fair share of taxes.

And it’s no wonder, when you look at what workers go through when they exercise their freedom to unite in unions:

  • Tens of thousands of workers are fired EVERY YEAR for trying to exercise the freedom to form a union.
  • 91% of workers who try to form a union are forced to attend anti-union meetings with their supervisors to be bullied into opposing a union.
  • 75% of companies employ hired guns to threaten and intimidate workers who want nothing more than a voice and a fair shake at work.
  • A union election is often the very opposite of the democratic principles on which our country was founded.
  • When employers violate the law, the penalty is so toothless that it actually encourages them to violate their own employees' rights.

The Employee Free Choice Act will restore democracy in the workplace so that workers can exercise their freedom to choose to join together and share in the prosperity they have done so much to create.

Workers make decisions every day that we all respect – where to live, how to spend their money, what religion to practice. The Employee Free Choice Act will allow them to make one of the most important decisions of their lives – how to manage their work lives – in exactly the same way and with exactly the same freedom.

The Employee Free Choice Act will help restore the middle class, our faith in our children’s future, and help re-establish the balance that is the promise and genius of America.