Last week, the National Labor Relations Board issued a decision against Goya Foods in Miami, ordering the company to cease making unilateral changes to its employees’ benefit plans without bargaining with its workers’ union over the changes.  According to Bruce Raynor, President of UNITE HERE, which represents these workers, this decision was the eleventh won by the workers against Goya Foods. 

Yet in a recent speech before the American Sociological Association, Raynor noted that these legal victories mean little as the company still refused to sit down and bargain with the union.

As I recently pointed out, the Goya workers voted for union representation in 1998, yet 10 years of decisions by the circuit courts and the NLRB couldn’t bring Goya to the bargaining table. Clearly we need an overhaul of our labor law to ensure that workers who vote for a union actually secure a contract with their employers. The Employee Free Choice Act holds that promise for workers.