Nurses are confronted with innumerable challenges as they work to deliver safe, quality care to their patients—chronic understaffing, mandatory overtime, hazardous working conditions and a lack of respect by some managers and physicians. To address these and other workplace issues, more and more nurses are trying to form a union so they—like doctors and hospital administrators—can negotiate a contract with hospital management.

But the current labor law system is broken. Although U.S. labor laws are supposed to protect the right of employees to organize a union, corporations routinely engage in unlawful conduct designed to undermine this right. When word gets out that nurses or any other American is trying to form a union, 75 percent of employers hire expensive outside consultants to run vicious anti-union campaigns that can include intimidation, harassment, coercion and even illegal firings. In fact, research has shown that employees are fired in one-quarter of private-sector union organizing campaigns. Needless to say, when corporations engage in these actions, not only are they breaking the law, but millions of dollars are siphoned away from patient care and living standards of entire communities are lowered.

To make sure nurses and other employees throughout America are protected from corporate actions designed to thwart the freedom of an employee to choose a union, the Employee Free Choice Act (H.R. 800/S. 1041) was introduced. This is a bipartisan bill that would ensure when employees in a workplace decide to form a union, their rights will be protected. The Employee Free Choice Act does three things to level the playing field for employees:

• Strengthens penalties for companies that illegally coerce or intimidate employees and prevent them from forming a union;
• Brings in a neutral third party to settle a contract between a company and a newly formed union if they cannot agree on a contract after three months; and
• Establishes a majority sign-up, meaning that if a majority of the employees signs union authorization cards, validated by the National Labor Relations Board, the employer must recognize the union.

The right to form a union is a basic human right. To find out more about the Employee Free Choice Act and to sign the AFL-CIO’s petition, click here.