Workers need right to unionize

Hardworking Americans are hurting. Paychecks have flat-lined, but everything else keeps going up - health care, college tuition, groceries and more.

Hardworking Americans need the ability to organize a union without fear of retaliation from their employer.

Today, hardworking men and women who try to form or join a union often face coercion, intimidation, or are simply fired by their employer. That needs to change.

The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) removes corporate veto power over workers' right to organize and bargain collectively. It fixes a system that is horribly skewed in favor of big businesses and corporations, and puts power back in the hands of hard working Americans.

If we're going to teach kids about the American dream, we need to make America a place where everyone has the same opportunities. That means the right to organize around issues like health care, pensions, and safe working conditions.

George Bush and the Republicans killed the Employee Free Choice Act last year; let's hope that Barack Obama and the Democrats can make it the law of the land next year.

Just think of how many $40,000-a-year jobs could be had for one CEO's million-dollar bonus. Companies are too big, CEO/CFO's are overpaid, too many people are homeless and hungry and dying to work.

History is compelled to repeat itself. Remember a time when too much money was held by too few and the peasants revolted. The Bastille was stormed and heads rolled.

Let's restore fairness the sane, levelheaded way: Keep companies smaller and restore the balance of power between workers and management.

E.D. Barber

Downers Grove