Fight over card-check shows who has real power
Regarding the Editorial last Friday “Secret ballots, card check and politics”:
While it remains to be seen if Senator Arlen Specters’ recently announced opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act will doom this legislation (3/27 – Secret ballots, card check and politics), the fact remains that the lack of worker rights has been a driving force behind rising income inequality.
The prospect of a majority of workers simply signing a card to form a union, like many Americans do to join a community organization, advocacy group, or even a political party has driven some to resort to unfounded claims of this legislation leading to large scale union coercion. The facts undermine the credibility of such claims.
The Employee Free Choice Act would maintain the current law against intimidation or coercion and actually increase the penalties for such actions. In fact, under current law thirty percent of employees must sign a card to qualify for a representation election. In addition, hundreds of thousands of workers have formed unions through a voluntary card check agreement with their employer. Under this process the employer agrees to recognize their union when over fifty percent of their employees sign cards stating this desire. All of this experience with card signing in the past should yield a bounty of union coercion charges if the critics are correct. According to the National Labor Relations Board there have only been 40 complaints in the last 60 years!
To put this in context, management can “persuade” employees in one-on-one meetings like the ones endured when we organized our union on the second attempt in 1995. One of my co-workers was the father of a child with a progressive neuromuscular disease. One of the managers “invited” this gentleman to a meeting about his future at the plant. During this meeting, the manager pointed out how difficult it would be to obtain health insurance coverage if my co-worker lost his job as a result of the union organizing campaign.
These tactics illustrate which party has the real power of coercion. The company has the power of your paycheck, schedule, and future in the organization. These threats become reality as 20,000 workers are illegally fired every year for wanting to join a union. Does this sound like a system that is protecting the American right to Freedom of Association?
Darin Gilley
President, UAW Local 1760
Pacific
I assume you approve of union thugs busting heads and knee caps, for not towing the line, driving up the price of a car with your 90% of pay for layoffs and very early retirements, and blackmailing industries for “more”, by walking off a job.
No wonder car companies are in the shape they are in.
Darin, maybe you can answer a question High Priest John Sweeney couldnt;
“Organized labor claims that secret-ballot elections lead to intimidation by employers, but if 90% of workers signed cards when confronted by union organizers in dark parking lots or in vacant break rooms and then only a very slim majority actually voted to unionize when those union operatives couldn’t see their votes, doesn’t that prove that union intimidation is much worse than employer intimidation?
We asked that simple question to two union officials at the rally, including AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. Not surprisingly, neither were really able to answer the question.”
watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meBfuFi2als
Darin Gilley:
“The company has the power of your paycheck, schedule, and future in the organization. These threats become reality as 20,000 workers are illegally fired every year for wanting to join a union. Does this sound like a system that is protecting the American right to Freedom of Association?”
I suppose you can cite a source (other than some screwball UAW newsletter) for 20,000 workers being illegally fired every year for wanting to join a union? UAW Local 1760 in Pacific, MO represented members at Integram St. Louis Seating, which supplied the seats for the St. Louis South Minivan Assembly Plant. Minivans are no longer produced in Fenton, were the UAW members threatened out of existence by cruel and inhuman management or did union sloth, greed and featherbedding make it unprofitable to assemble a product at that location?
We don’t need unions. Period. All they do is drive up the products we buy. No unions means lower prices for all of us.
Back in 2005 and 2006, the company that I work for voted against Local 610 and then Amalgamated Transit union representation. To my knowledge, not one person was harassed nor fired supporting the union effort. As a matter of fact, the men who spearheaded the anti-union propaganda for the company both got fired within months of the voting that took place. It was a rather surreal situation.
Don’t have to bother with unions.
Gubermunt cheese
Gubermunt peanut butter
Gubermunt banks
Gubermunt Wall Street
Gubermunt health care
Gubermunt cars
Gubermunt car warranty
I’m shocked! All the right-wingers here are against unions. But, it just goes to show the republics aren’t really against the Employee Free Choice Act itself, they HATE anything that betters the working class.
— non union
Proof there’s no internet troll union.
juanita4748
— non union
Proof there’s no internet troll union.
— juanita4748
10:17 am March 31st, 2009
And you are proof positive. Get in line for your Gubermunt handouts.
Proof there’s no internet troll union.
— juanita4748
10:17 am March 31st, 2009
I thought you were a card carrying member…..