Why Workers Need the Freedom to Form Unions

 Joining together in a union to bargain for health care, pensions, fair wages and better working conditions is the best opportunity working people have to get ahead.

Today, good jobs are vanishing and health care coverage and retirement security are slipping out of reach. Only 38 percent of the public says their families are getting ahead financially and less than a quarter believes the next generation will be better off.

But workers who belong to unions earn 28 percent more than nonunion workers. They are 52 percent more likely to have employer-provided health coverage and nearly three times more likely to have guaranteed pensions.

All workers should have the freedom to decide for themselves whether to form unions to bargain for a better life.

• Read report: No Holds Barred: The Intensification of Employer Opposition to Organizing, by Kate Bronfenbrenner. 
• Read report: "Union Representation and the NLRA"(PDF).
• Read report: "What the Freedom to Join Unions Means to American Workers and the Middle Class" (PDF).
• Learn more about the union difference in wages and benefits.
• Read report: "The Recession and the Freedom to Organize," by Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
• Economic Policy Institute: Questions and answers on the Employee Free Choice Act.
• Coalition of Labor Union Women: Why women need the Employee Free Choice Act.
• Fact sheet: The Employee Free Choice Act and professional and technical employees.
• The public strongly supports laws to make it easier to form unions and bargain.
• Read stories about workers fighting to form unions.