April 14, 2009 08:33 PM UTC

"Faces of the Employee Free Choice Act" Come to Colorado

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• by: ranr

Please take a moment to write Sen. Bennet and tell him to stand up for hard-working Coloradans like us.



This past week, the Employee Free Choice Act came home to Colorado in a way that hadn’t been seen before: with a traveling billboard featuring two people whose lives would have been better had the act been in place.

Dan Luevano was an electrician, working hard to support his family. Roberta Ayala taught art and supported non-verbal autistic children at a private school in Denver.

I didn’t have a chance to talk to Roberta; I did spend a few minutes talking with Dan, asking him how he came to be one of the faces of the employee free choice movement.

Both of them came to a point where they thought a union would help them become better workers. Their employers disagreed.

“I looked at a union because I was worried about the direction my company was taking, with hiring people that weren’t qualified to do the job,” said Dan. “I worked with them for 10 years,  and I thought bringing in a union would help everyone in the company.”

At the union election in 2006, even though a vast majority had signed cards asking to set up a union, the vote resulted in a tie — allegedly because of the employer’s heavy-handed intimidation. Soon after that, Dan and most of his co-workers left the company, taking decades of experience with them.

If the Employee Free Choice Act had been law, the workers would’ve had the right to form a union after that majority signed and turned in their cards, instead of being subjected to an employer-led campaign of threats and intimidation.

Today, Dan works for a union contractor, and can’t wait to get to work in the morning. Despite all he’s been through, Dan doesn’t want anyone to feel sorry for him.

“I want to people to be aware that this happens more than it should. People shouldn’t be punished for wanting to make their lives better. The Employee Free Choice Act isn’t just about people joining unions — it’s about making a better economy for workers and lifting up the middle class.”

You can read more about the Faces of the Employee Free Choice Act here, including Roberta’s story.