Before anything, let me thank Pat Eiding and all my friends at the Philadelphia Council, AFL-CIO, for organizing today’s program -- and, of course, 1210 AM The Big Talker.

I don’t think it’s any exaggeration to say that the Employee Free Choice Act may be one of the most talked about issues facing Congress. And, thanks in no small part to the campaign being waged by its opponents -- a campaign that could become the most expensive in U.S. history -- it’s also one of the least understood.

Now, am I saying the other side is intentionally lying about the Employee Free Choice Act? Well, let’s put it this way: when you consider the falsehoods, the exaggerations, and the misinformation the opposition has spread, it’s clear that they would agree with Mark Twain when he said: “Truth is the most valuable thing we have, so I try to conserve it.” It was reported that in October, Bernie Marcus, the co-founder of Home Depot, said that passage of the Employee Free Choice Act would trigger -- quote -- “the demise of civilization.”

Now, my guess, is that if you asked most people what the greatest threat is to civilization today, they might say global warming, or terrorism, or disease, or hunger, but very few would say it’s making revisions to the 1935 National Labor Relations Act. So why the hysteria?

It’s not because the Employee Free Choice Act is a threat to civilization; but because it’s a threat to an approach to management that’s a throwback to another era: An era, when employers could get away believing cooperation was when workers shut up and did as they were told. An era when an employer could get by only valuing workers only for their muscles and not their minds.

A bygone era when businesses thought unions were the enemy, when we can actually be their best allies. I think President Obama might have put it best when he said we: “Cannot have a strong middle class without a strong labor movement and that strong, vibrant, growing unions can exist side by side with strong, vibrant and growing businesses. It’s not an “either/or proposition.”

That's the old argument, he said. "The new argument is that the American economy is not and has never been a zero-sum game. "We can be competitive and lean and mean and still create a situation where workers are thriving in this country," he said. I can tell you, those of us in the labor movement? We understand that. We know our jobs depend on our employers turning a profit. And there are a lot of business leaders who get that, too. They know that unions can help see to it that they have the best-trained and productive workers anywhere.

But there are a lot of corporations that -- don’t and that’s why we need to pass the Employee Free Choice Act.

 Don’t take my word for it: just ask Ivo Camillo. Listen to what happened when he and his workers tried to form a union at Blue Diamond Growers in Sacramento, California. For 35 years, Ivo worked as a machine operator at the Blue Diamond Growers plant up in Sacramento. In 2004, he and his co-workers began organizing to join the ILWU. Here’s what happened -- and I’m quoting Ivo: “In April we gave management a letter with the names of 58 co-workers who agreed to be part of an organizing committee.

We told them we knew our rights under the National Labor Relations Act—and we expected those rights to be respected. We got together and delivered that letter April 15. Less than a week later I was fired.” And it isn’t just Ivo Camillo and it’s not just companies like Blue Diamond.

Just ask John Pezzana. Jeff Richenbach knows all about this one.

Around eight years ago, John Pezzana went to work as a technician at AT&T Broadband in Pittsburgh. Before that he had a job at a smaller telecom company. The work was similar; what wasn’t was that, at his old job, he had a CWA contract. Well, people know how good CWA contracts are. That’s why, before long, his new co-workers asked John if he could call the union and talk with them about organizing. When he did that, he found out that CWA had negotiated a neutrality agreement with AT&T to keep them from interfering when its workers decided to organize. When he told his co-workers they were thrilled to death. But it didn’t last long.

The workers managed to collect enough cards to file a petition for an election -- and that should have been the end of it. But, instead of standing back and honoring their agreement to let the workers decide for themselves whether to have a union, managers began twisting arms. But John and his co-workers refused to be intimidated. It wasn’t easy, but they stood together and, in the fall of 2000, they voted in the CWA.

Now, that should have been the end of it. But it wasn’t. Because when AT&T began merger talks with Comcast, the dragged its feet on bargaining a first contract. Why? Well, the reason why became obvious because once Comcast took over, it took away -- illegally took away -- the workers' pension plan -- and then launched a campaign of its own to decertify the union. The union was voted out in 2003, but the NLRB found that Comcast violated the law so brazenly that it ordered another election. In that election, workers voted 3-to-1 for the CWA.

Now, that should have been the end of it. But instead, Comcast refused to negotiate and started another campaign against the union. That led to still another election and still more violations by Comcast. Well, at long last, the NLRB certified the election results and, finally, finally, John Pezzana and his coworkers were able to negotiate a union contract.

All it took was five years ... and three different elections!

Of course, anyone who’s ever taken part in a union organizing drive will tell you that there’s nothing new about companies digging in their heals and using every trick in the book to try to keep workers from organizing. What’s different today is the sheer scale of it: Businesses fire pro-union workers in one out of every four organizing drives. Half of employers threaten to shut down if workers choose a union. And in those relatively rare instances where workers do succeed in gaining legal recognition for their union? One-third of employers still refuse to negotiate a contract.

Oh, and the National Labor Relations Board?

Well, I know there are a lot of good people within the NLRB. People who are as frustrated as we are. But the reality is that, after eight years of absolute corporate domination and decades of neglect, the NLRB has become the 98 lb. weakling of the federal government. In fact, a report by the board’s own inspector general found that, today, the NLRB takes an average of two and one half years to decide cases filed by workers and unions. The upshot is that now an anti-union employer has what amounts to an incentive to break the law and violate a worker’s right to have a union. And strengthening the law to protect those rights is exactly what the Employee Free Choice Act would do. And how it would do it isn’t very complicated.

Let me just run through this because it’s important you hear it.

There are three parts to it:

First, it says that when a majority of employees sign authorization cards designating the union as their bargaining representative, the union will be certified by the National Labor Relations Board. Period. Now, that’s actually an option that’s available under current labor law, but only when both the union and the company agree to it. And, again, the companies who agree to it aren’t the problem.

Second, the Employee Free Choice Act guarantees that when workers do decide to have a union they’re also going to get a contract. If an employer and a union can’t reach an agreement on a first contract within 90 days, either party can ask for mediation and, if that doesn’t work, it can go to binding arbitration. The key point is that it removes the incentive for an employer to stall. It says if you have a union, you’re going to get a contract.

The third point is that the Employee Free Choice Act would put some teeth into the penalties against companies that break the law during organizing campaigns and first contract negotiations.

Those are the key components.

Now, to me, that doesn’t sound like the end of civilization as we know it. -- and I’m going to guess it doesn’t sound that way to you, either. In fact, we had some polling done and found that, when people find out what’s actually in the Employee Free Choice Act more than 70 percent support it! One way to think about it is that the percentage of people who don’t support the Employee Free Choice Act is about the same as those who thought George Bush was doing a good job. In truth, I think a lot of them are the same people!

So, if you opposed the Employee Free Choice Act, and you knew that that people would favor it if they found out what’s in it, what would do? Well, you’d do what the opposition is doing right now: waging a $200 million dollar campaign to convince Americans that this proposal is something it simply is not.

Just listen to Sean Hannity: “Here's what you can expect within Obama's first two years. The biggest pro-union bill since 1935 -- it's called the Employee Free Choice Act -- (it) would erase secret ballot elections!”

Or listen to Karl Rove. A true champion of working people. He went on The O'Reilly Factor, to reveal that Barack Obama, quote: “Went to the AFL-CIO and said, I'm in favor of card check -- taking away the working man's right to a secret ba

llot.” Now, I was at that meeting and I can tell you for a fact that Barack Obama didn’t say he wants to take away the working man’s right to a secret ballot. Well let me ask you: since when have facts ever mattered to those guys? So what’s our message to America? That we should support the Employee Free Choice Act because it will help Ivo, and John, and the millions of other workers who want to form a union where they work? Sure. But, you know, this law won’t only help them: it will help all of us, our families, and our country. Because, historically, when unions grow the middle-class grows with it.

By guaranteeing workers the right to bargain for better wages -- by enabling them to get more of a share of the wealth they created through their productivity -- money that would otherwise be getting socked away in executive bank accounts or gambled on Wall Street, instead goes into worker paychecks. In fact, there was just a study that found that if workers were rewarded for 100 percent of their increases in labor productivity since 1980 -- as they were back when unions were stronger -- the average real hourly wage would be almost 43 percent higher than it is right now. Think of what you and your friends and your neighbors could do if you had that extra money in your paycheck right now? Think of what it would do for this country’s economy? That’s why, back during the depths of the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt said American needs strong unions. He knew that workers needed more money in their pockets -- and that collective bargaining could make that happen more efficiently than anyone.

That’s why President Roosevelt backed the National Labor Relations Act then and it’s why President Obama supports the Employee Free Choice Act today. That’s why our message to Congress is that you did good when you voted to pass the president’s recovery plan.

Our message to Arlen Specter and Bob Casey and Frank Lautenberg and Bob Menendez is that by supporting that plan you helped create jobs. Now, it’s time to stand up and see to it that those jobs -- and millions of others -- offer the wages and benefits Americans need to make it into the middle-class and stay there.

Our message is, don’t support the Employee Free Choice Act because the AFL-CIO asks you to support it because this nation needs you to. A strong, growing middle-class doesn’t have to be part of America’s past; with unions ... and collective bargaining we can make it part of America’s future!

Thank you!