When security guard Richard Ruiz expressed frustration over he and his coworkers' unsuccessful efforts to form a union in their workplace to Miami New Times' blog Riptide, he was simply trying to give a voice to their struggle.

In January, about seventy-five percent of the Security Alliance guards signed cards to form a union with SEIU--but since that time, he and the 50 or so security guards employed by Security Alliance of Florida in the Miami Beach area had been experiencing intimidation, scare tactics and harassment at the hands of their employer for exercising their rights to organize. Ruiz was the only one out of his coworkers who was willing to speak about their efforts to form a union on the record.

His reward for having the courage to speak out for what he believes in? Losing his job. "We are trying to make this city safer for everybody, but I was fired when they found out I was speaking out and wanted a union," said Richard Ruiz, who was terminated after working for more than two years for Security Alliance. "Employers shouldn't stop decent people from trying to have a better life."

It's not often we get to bring you news of workers organizing to have a voice at work on such a large scale -- but today is one of those days! 13,00 home care attendants in Missouri's consumer directed home care program have voted to join the Missouri Home Care Union, a statewide union of home care attendants that's a joint local of AFSCME and SEIU.

The vote passed by a landslide margin of 85% "Yes" to 15% "No," and the election was conducted by the state Board of Mediation and was the largest of its kind in Missouri history.

In spite of the fact that home-based care is more cost-effective than institutional or nursing home care, many of the consumers in the state struggle to keep caregivers on the job--40-60% of attendants leave their positions every year. The central reason for this is that many home care attendants simply can't afford to stay at their jobs and take care of their families because they don't have health insurance benefits, sick days or vacation time.

With the number of elderly Missourians expected to rise more than 70 percent in the next twenty years, the demand for home care services will skyrocket. Which makes investing in the creation of good home care jobs to help build a stable workforce that will be able to ensure older Missourians can remain in the setting they prefer, their homes, is more important than ever.

"The next step is to join forces with consumers to make home care better and available to more Missourians," said Salem attendant Theresa Bach. Read more here.

In a town hall meeting today in New Mexico, President Obama reaffirmed his commitment to passing the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill that would allow workers to bargain with their employers for better job security, wages and benefits.

Watch it:

"What a difference a President makes," said SEIU International President Andy Stern. "For hard-working families who suffered for eight long years under George Bush's extreme anti-worker policies, President Obama's and Vice President Biden's leadership on behalf of the middle class is a breath of long-needed fresh air. We consider the President and Vice President steadfast partners in our fight to give working people a voice on the job in the face of the most challenging economic times since the Great Depression--and we look forward to seeing them at the signing ceremony of the Employee Free Choice Act."

Text of Obama's full remarks below the fold.

In 2007 alone, more than 29,000 workers were fired or disciplined for union activity. Trisha Miechur, a Certified Nurse Assistant at a ManorCare nursing home in Easton, PA, is one of those workers.

Fed up with the short staffing and high turnover that was affecting the level of patient care in the nursing home, Trish started talking to her coworkers about forming a union. "I thought that if we were united, we would finally have a voice in the decisions that affected us and our residents," writes Miehchur in an op-ed for The Morning Call. "You would think that in America, workers are free to decide for themselves about forming a union; but I can tell you, it's anything but a free choice."

The truth is that companies routinely fire or threaten employees who sign cards calling for union elections. Corporations almost always choose delay tactics that force workers to go through elections that can take months, sometimes years and in 40 percent of cases where an election has been requested, the election isn't even held because of interference from the employer.

Trisha describes the illegal interrogation, threats, and retaliation she suffered at the hands of her ManorCare employers in their attempts to stifle union activity:

While we were trying to form our union, we were repeatedly taken away from our residents to go to meetings with management. ....At one point I was given a final written warning because management accused me of asking residents and family members to sign letters to state legislators about the quality of care at our nursing home. The warning said I was being disloyal and that if my behavior continued, I would be ''subject to termination."

After that, I was scared whenever I walked into work. But I also knew that I was right to stand up for myself and my residents.

In the summer of 2007, Trisha and her coworkers--like other Carlyle-ManorCare workers nationwide--had been struggling to form a union for more than a year. After filing Federal charges against Carlyle-ManorCare, a National Labor Relations Board judge ruled nine months later that Manor Care violated the law for threatening Trisha and writing her up. Problem solved, right? Wrong.

Today, the Politico debuted a special section online and in print about the Employee Free Choice Act. Asked what difference the Employee Free Choice would make, Stern responded, "It allows workers to negotiate with their employers. So when there are increases in productivity or increases in profits, [workers] get to share in the gain. They're clearly sharing in the pain right now, so the real issue is will they share in the gain? The Employee Free Choice Act gives them that chance."

SEIU President Andy Stern and the Chamber of Commerce's Steven Law take five questions in five minutes. Watch the Politico video here:

In The Arena, Secretary-Treasurer Anna Burger explains why Congress should pass the Employee Free Choice Act through telling the story of Janneke Emery, a Washington state healthcare worker who, along with her coworkers, has struggled to gain a voice on the job.

Despite their election victory, a clear majority of support for the union and surviving an intense anti-union campaign, the hospital CEOs have denied Janneke and her coworkers the chance to sit down and bargain with their employer for a better workplace for themselves and their patients, and better lives for their families for over a year.

The Employee Free Choice Act gives workers the freedom to choose whether or not a union is right for their workplace, free from threats, intimidation by management, or even firing. The Act would mean bigger fines and harsher penalties for employers that violate the law.

Read Anna's entire response on Politico here. Check out Politico's special section on Employee Free Choice here.

Almost as soon as she begin her new job as a housekeeper at Jorgensen's motel, Amy Swanson knew that the workplace conditions she and her coworkers were subjected to were untenable. There was no access to affordable healthcare and her wages were pitifully low. She and the other employees of the Helena, Montana motel had no job security, and little to no say in what their schedules would be from week-to-week.

"I knew I had to speak out," said Amy, sharing her story at a congressional briefing held by the National Council of Women's Organizations (NCWO) on Capitol Hill this morning. "Not only for my own family, but for my co-workers and future housekeepers who will work at Jorgensen's. There was no reason why my job had to be a job with low wages, no benefits and high turnover." Amy knew from past experience the best way to go about improving her workplace:

I already knew that workers could win by forming a union. Before I moved to Helena I worked in food service at Warm Springs State Hospital. Because we had a union we were able to win healthcare coverage, job security and wages that could support a family.

That's not asking for much. But for me it means everything. It means not staying up at night worrying about how I'm going to keep the electricity on and put food on the table. It means being able to take my daughter to the doctor when she is sick or just bring her in for a checkup.

Amy started talking to her co-workers about advocating for workplace standards, higher wages and respect on the job through forming a union. Once these discussions on gaining a voice at work were underway, the employers at Jorgensen's motel made it clear right away that they were not in favor of the idea, singling Amy out to try and intimidate the other housekeepers from supporting the union. They changed her work schedule so she could no longer always pick up her daughter after school. They cut her schedule from 40 hours between 20 and 25 hours per week--and then added more rooms to her daily cleaning schedule. She was under constant surveillance by management, which was hard to deal with, Amy says. "It was a very intimidating environment and it was clear they wanted me to quit, but that was not even an option for me to consider."

Employers routinely and flagrantly violate workers' rights when they try to form unions for a voice. Studies show that 25 percent of union organizing drives lead to employee firing, and that one out of every five workers who openly support a union are fired. Amy Swanson can attest to these facts firsthand, since it happened to her:

One week before my one-year anniversary, I was fired. I worked hard everyday to support my daughter, and I was fired for speaking out and trying to improve my job.

This should not happen in America.

Luckily I found another job a few weeks later as a food service worker at a school in Helena. The hours allow me to care for my daughter, but I still don't have a union and I can't afford the health coverage offered.

If enacted, the Employee Free Choice Act would allow workers to form unions without having to go through what Amy experienced. She and her coworkers would have had the free choice to form a union to improve their jobs and better support their families, without encountering employer resistance, intimidation or termination. They would have been able to win a contract that would Amy to provide for her daughter the life she deserves.

Read more about employer-based intimidation in the workplace here and why we need the Employee Free Choice Act.

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Amy Swanson is a Grassroots Lobbyist through SEIU's Change That Works campaign. You can read more about the program here.

SEIU and the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC) today announced the signing of a transformative cooperation agreement.

The two unions will work together to organize hospital workers throughout the country who don't yet have a union voice, with CNA/NNOC as the leading voice for RNs, and SEIU as the leading voice for all other hospital workers.

With the opportunity to win the Employee Free Choice Act and healthcare reform just around the corner, both SEIU and CNA/NNOC recognized that their energy and resources would be better spent on uniting all healthcare workers -- instead of focusing on the issues that divide them. Although the two unions have not always seen eye-to-eye in the past, this new agreement puts an end to past conflicts and commits both unions to working together on issues that are most important to health care workers: bringing the power of collective bargaining to all health care workers and advocating for better health care jobs, staffing, and patient care. "It's much more than a truce," SEIU president Andy Stern told AP. "It's really trying to establish a partnership at a moment of profound change in our country."

As part of this agreement, neither union will interfere with the other's organizing campaigns or internal affairs--and will collaborate on future organizing in some of the nation's largest hospital systems. Together, SEIU and CNA/NNOC will create a new joint RN organization in Florida to represent current and future RNs of both unions in that state. In all other states, SEIU will continue to represent its current RN members in bargaining.

Given the challenges facing health care workers today, bringing together the strength of the nation's largest health care union and largest RN union to work towards increased union representation for healthcare workers will hugely assist efforts to enact genuine healthcare reform nationally and for measures that allow states to adopt single-payer health care systems. "Those who recognize our shared value of making sure registered nurses and other health care workers have not only a say but a critical role in helping reshape a failed system into something that actually helps people know that this is the right step to help us meet the challenge and the call of this moment," said Stern.

When executives at Northern Berkshire Healthcare received word that the nursing home staff at Massachusetts Sweet Brook Care Centers petitioned to join 1199SEIU in January, they wasted no time before launching an anti-organizing campaign.

Their thinly veiled effort to strip caregivers of their voting rights didn't fool anyone--including the National Labor Relations Board. The Boston Regional Office of the NLRB issued a decision in favor of the long term care workers at Sweet Brook Nursing Home in Williamsburg, MA, on Monday, ruling that registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, and lead certified nursing assistants will be eligible to vote in an upcoming union election.

In their 19-page decision reached after lengthy hearings, the NLRB rejected all arguments presented by executives at Sweet Brook and Northern Berkshire Healthcare (NBH) as part of an effort to exclude the caregivers from exercising a voice at work. NBH argued that registered nurses, LPNs and "lead" certified nursing assistants have supervisory authority that would prevent them from becoming union members.

"They were trying to say that we manage the other CNAs and have the power to change things," said Betty Higley, a lead certified nursing assistant in the dementia unit at Sweet Brook. "But you're just there to make sure the paperwork gets done. There was nothing that the hospital brought up that proved we were managers -- I still work weekends, I still work holidays. You can't dispute the truth."

Caregivers estimate that Northern Berkshire Healthcare has now wasted many tens of thousands of dollars in taxpayer and patient care funds on executive junkets and a discretionary, totally meritless and unfounded legal battle against the voting rights of NBH employees at the Sweet Brook Nursing Home. Health system officials' defense is that they wanted to ensure the local's establishment was done correctly, and that the $500 an hour specialty lawyers were needed for last week's National Labor Relations Board hearings on union organizing at Sweet Brook that were held in Boston.

What were some of the many tactics Northern Berkshire Healthcare, led by CEO Richard Palmisano, employed while workers fought for the right to hold an election to have a voice at work?

1. Threatened service reductions and layoffs by hospital executives due to budgetary shortfalls at North Adams Regional Hospital.
   
2. An internal campaign of intimidation waged by the nursing home's own CEO, to guilt-trip employees by convincing them that forming a union would be equivalent to giving up their goals of improving resident care and jobs at the home.
   
3. One-on-one meetings with workers about their private voting choices, conducted by NBH executives.
   
4. Six days of NLRB hearings and testimony in Boston and Leominster, where testifying caregivers were kept away from their families and the nursing home residents for whom they care. During this hearing, NBH officials also tried to bar 35 nurses and certified nursing assistants from the election.

The answer: all of the above.

The overwhelming majority of eligible staff at Sweet Brook have already expressed, in writing, their support for forming a union at the nursing home. "Management at Sweet Brook has been doing everything in their power to prevent us from voting in a union election," said Betty Higley, a lead certified nursing assistant at Sweet Brook who attended the hearings, "They kept us away from home for almost a week. Enough is enough. Let us vote!"

Tremendous support from the workforce in question isn't stopping NBH, however--- Vice President of External Affairs Diane Cutillo said on Monday that the health-care system is appealing the decision to the National Labor Board in Washington, DC.