ERA Reforms a Top Priority in 2016

The Employee Rights Act (ERA) is making waves in Washington. The bill already has over 100 co-sponsors in Congress, including two presidential candidates. And now The Washington Examiner‘s editorial board has named the ERA a top congressional priority in 2016. Read more below:
Many workers today belong to unions because of inertia, not because they want to be. They might be stuck paying dues to a union because workers who retired voted to unionize in 1955, or some other date in the dim and distant past. More than 90 percent of unionized workers today never had the opportunity to vote for the union themselves.
The Employee Rights Act would change this, improving union democracy by guaranteeing a secret-ballot vote for workers and giving them a regularly scheduled automatic opportunity to choose whether to keep their union, choose another, or dispense with big labor’s “services” altogether. The bill would also criminalize union violence and reduce opportunities for harassment of workers.
It’s true. The ERA would provide union members—over 90 percent of whom didn’t vote for the union now representing them—with several on-the-job protections. And it would guarantee employees mulling union representation the right to privacy they lack under current labor law.
Washington recognizes the need for labor reform. Hopefully, 2016 is the year it becomes a reality.