Help Support the Employee Free Choice Act

The next two weeks are crucial in our campaign for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act. In this time it’s important that we have as much contact with Senator Bingaman as possible and let him hear from the people of New Mexico. He’s getting plenty of phone calls from the other side. The clamor he hears during the important discussions going on needs to be from us, not from our opposition. 

The Employee Free Choice Act would enable working people to bargain for better benefits, wages and working conditions by restoring workers’ freedom to choose for themselves whether to join a union.

If you are thinking this may not be relevant to you as a professional actor, consider the time frame in which television, motion pictures, commercials and new media productions are made. There is often a very limited production schedule and cast and crew members are employed for days and weeks, not months. The current process to organize workers to form a union involves a lengthy and convoluted process. We believe this is by design, so that employers have a longer period of time to dissuade workers and sometimes even engage in scare tactics.

Your work product can be on movie, television and computer screens long before cast and crewmembers would ever get to exercise their right to achieve a collective bargaining agreement. Meanwhile, non-union actors take your jobs. We feel passage of the Employee Free Choice Act will empower Screen Actors Guild members to organize more work opportunities under your negotiated union contracts. The Employee Free Choice Act guarantees every America worker’s right to form or join a union by casting his or her SECRET BALLOT vote in a timely fashion.

What You Can Do

Senator Jeff Bingaman has not yet agreed to co-sponsor the Employee Free Choice Act, so New Mexico has become a "targeted state" for the passage of this important legislation. Last year he was a co-sponsor. Bingaman's office has stated that he is hearing 10 to 1 in opposition to Employee Free Choice. We must correct that!

Contact Senator Bingaman today and explain that you are a proud member of Screen Actors Guild and that this bill is critical to protect the rights of all workers to choose a union and you urge him to VOTE YES. Be sure to include your name, address, email address and phone number.

Toll-free in New Mexico: (866) 207-2060
Washington, DC: (202) 224-5521
EMAIL - http://bingaman.senate.gov/contact/types/email-issue.cfm