CWA: Senate Vote on FAA Reauthorization Caves in to Minority?s Ideological Agenda

Washington, D.C. -- Today’s Senate vote on the Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization bill is another step in the destruction of workers’ bargaining rights in America.

With this vote, the Senate has caved in to the ideological agenda of House Speaker John Boehner. Boehner and too many others saw fit to take an otherwise good bill, a bill that should be about jobs, and use this process to destroy workers’ rights. Workers shouldn’t have to choose between jobs and rights, but that’s the result of today’s vote.

House Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi, George Miller and other leaders fought back against this attack, and with 155 Democratic colleagues, stood up for democracy and workers' rights. They championed democracy at work, and we’ll remember that in November.

This vote was all about misusing the legislative process to destroy the rights of working people. That's not what democracy looks like.

By this vote, Senators agreed to change federal labor law to make it even harder for workers who want union representation, capitulating to those who preferred to hold critical transportation jobs and projects hostage rather than allow democracy on the job.

Until last year, transportation union elections were held to a standard under which anyone not voting was counted as a no. No elected official, from the U.S. Senate to the smallest municipality, is compelled to run under such an undemocratic standard. Because that’s not democracy in America.

Yet some Senators, and House members as well, never stopped trying to overturn the majority vote election standard finally put in place for transportation workers. Their strategy became to attack transportation workers' rights in every way possible.

It's a sad day when a minority pursuing a radical, anti-worker agenda prevails in the U.S. Senate. That’s not what democracy looks like.

Contact: Candice Johnson or Chuck Porcari, CWA Communications, 202-434-1168, cjohnson@cwa-union.org and cporcari@cwa-uion.org