I was listening to the radio the other day and heard a commercial paid for and distributed by the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce. In it, they were talking about the Employee Freedom of Choice Act, but all of what they said were either distortions or flat-out lies.

The chamber would have you believe, if you listen to its radio ads, that this act is bad for employees. But just who does the chamber represent? Not employees, that is for sure.

You won’t hear this on the distorted chamber ads, but this is how a union vote usually works. Some employees want to be unionized so they contact a union. The first step is to get people to sign union cards; the employees need a one-vote majority from these cards to have the right to have a formal union vote.

The chamber fails to say this; they would have you believe that the card signing is the vote, and that it is out in the open, not a private vote. Another big lie. What happens next, according to the Minnesota Chamber, is that employees will have other workers coming to their homes late at night to try to intimidate them into voting for the union, another lie.

I have been a member of three different unions and have never encountered any of these circumstances. What I have had, after signing the card, is the employer, my boss, coming to my home and trying to intimidate me into voting no.

After signing the cards, the employers have a few weeks to put the pressure on its employees, not the other way around.

People who signed the cards are told through rumors that if the union vote fails that the ones who signed cards will have their employment status put in jeopardy.

What this act hopes to do — and make no mistake, this is an employee-friendly act — is to take all the strong-arm tactics out of the situation. Instead of feeling like you are putting your job on the line by signing a union card with the possibility that it could later be voted down, this act wants the card signing to be the vote. Put simply, the way it stands now, if you have say, 50 employees, you would need to get 26 people to sign cards just to get a vote at a later time.

The chamber and big employers don’t want this act to pass, which should be an indication right there that it is good for employees and bad for the employer. It is the employers who want the system to stay the same, so they can be the ones that will have time to put pressure on its employees.

The chamber doesn’t want to eliminate the card signing, which is out in the open, yet they cry about the vote not being private.

Just remember who the chamber works for and don’t believe the lies and distortions that our money has paid for. Support Tim Walz and others who are helping people unionize.

Mike Simmons

Albert Lea