Employee Free Choice Act

The Employee Free Choice Act is a piece of legislation that is currently before the 111th Congress.

Employee Free Choice Act fixes a broken system that gives corporations far too much power. Current law unfairly favors employers during a union organizing campaign by allowing them to drag a union election out for months, sometimes even as long as a year. When workers try to organize their workplace, they are often harassed and intimidated during the unnecessarily long election period favored by their employers. The Employee Free Choice Act gives the power back to the workers to decide between signing cards or holding an election It will allow workers to vote immediately on whether they want to become part of a union and minimize management’s ability to penalize workers who choose to engage in organizing activities.

This legislation will:

– Increase penalties for companies that violate workers’ freedom while trying to form a union
– Provide first-contract mediation and arbitration
– Provide for certification of a union through majority sign-up if over 50% of the workplace indicates they’d like a union
– Allow for Secret Ballots

Please email your comments, questions and suggestions to advocacy@sag.org

SAG is working as part of a broad coordinated effort involving a coalition of labor and workers rights advocates to champion and enact the Employee Free Choice Act.

The importance of this legislation to SAG members cannot be overstated. The entertainment industry is flooded with projects with quick turn-around times (especially in the area of new media), union actors will benefit tremendously from the removal of these onerous laws that slow down the process and make it harder to organize non-union productions.

Furthermore, the vitality of unions in the United States is crucial to the success of the Screen Actors Guild and all of our brothers and sisters in the entertainment unions. Not only do we believe that strengthening workers rights will lead to a more prosperous and healthy country for all citizens, we believe that strong pro-worker legislation will lead to more and more entertainment jobs being produced union.