Write a letter to Senator Snowe to support our veterans and say yes to Employee Free Choice
Last week, a group of Maine veterans gathered together in Portland to voice their support for the Employee Free Choice Act. A recent segment on the Maine Public Broadcasting Network highlighted the stories of three of these veterans, and how their experience serving our country convinced them that passing the Employee Free Choice Act is necessary for Maine and for our country.
All three combat veterans, now employed in the U.S. Postal Service, spoke of the difficulty of returning home from war to a job market with uncertain employments, meager benefits, and no security. The lack of benefits and security available in the civilian job market even prompts some to re-enlist in the military. Says combat veteran Sean Kraft:
"After having the safety of the military, knowing that you're going to have food, clothes on your back and a roof over your head, it's really hard to come into the civilian world and you really don't know if you'll have that, and that's why a lot of people end up going right back in."
Meanwhile, Maine veteran Archie Etheridge empathized with those hardworking Maine families struggling every day to make ends meet. While Etheridge returned home from war to a steady job with the postal service, he saw friends and neighbors who weren't so lucky:
"Yeah, quite a few of them I'd say, probably two-thirds. A lot of people from Maine are self-employed and I would call it under-employed, like doing one of two jobs just to make ends meet. To me, I was saying, well, that's kind of strange. I could back to the Post Office like I never left, because the union and all that keeps my job there, so when I come back I just walk back in and start delivering mail again like I never left."
It's not only Maine's veterans that support the Employee Free Choice Act: the Center for American Progress' latest report shows how Maine's economy as a whole would benefit from increased unionization.
- Union workers have higher wages: Union workers in Maine were on average 8.6% higher than non-union workers with similar jobs. So Maine workers who are employed in a union earn $1.54 more per hour than their non-union counterparts.
- Unionization rewards workers' productivity:
- Increased unionization provides increased benefits:
If union coverage rates were 5% higher than they are currently, Maine's newly unionized workers would earn an estimated $77 million more in wages and salaries per year.
Union workers nationwide are 28.2% more liked to be covered by employee health insurance and 53.9% more likely to have employer-provided pensions than their non-union counterparts.
So support our veterans. Support our workers. Support our economy, and support Maine's future. Write a letter to Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins and urge them to support the Employee Free Choice Act today:
http://action.seiu.org/page/speakout/veterans4choice
