A standard message of anti-union campaigns is that unions are businesses that exist only to coerce dues out of workers, and that the dues workers pay will amount to more than the benefits they derive from a union contract. If there were a union at Kumho, dues would be entirely voluntary. Nevertheless, communications from management sought to convince workers that they would be forced to pay dues against their will. If the union wins the election, it will be speaking for all employees in the bargaining unit as a group, regardless of how an individual employee voted.
Why would Kumho employees believe such demonstrably false claims from management? Above all, because they are bombarded by one-sided information, with little or no opportunity to hear from the union. Democracy relies above all on free speech to create an informed citizenry.
But under current law, it is impossible for most workers to have balanced information. Pro-union employees are only permitted to talk about their cause while on break time and in break areas. But at Kumho, supervisors were often present in both the cafeteria and break rooms, making these spaces feel unsafe.
Indeed, even home visits by union organizers or pro-union workers proved difficult to arrange. Many Kumho employees live far outside of town. At first, between 20 and 25 employees came to meetings at the union office at the end of each shift. Less than one month later, employees voted — against unionization. Almost immediately following the election, the union filed charges with the NLRB, alleging that Kumho had broken the law by threatening and intimidating workers into voting no.
The central question of the Kumho experience is how pro-union employees were so quickly led to vote against organizing. Some were likely driven to vote no simply out of desperation to end the state of heightened tension in the workplace. Above all, employees reported, people voted no because management convinced them that their jobs were at risk. People were afraid to lose their job. One employee who signed a union card and then voted no was convinced by their supervisor that unionization might drive Kumho out of business.
Many of the strongest union supporters were either fired or quit following the election. Indeed, there is little reason for employers facing rerun elections not to engage in the same illegal intimidation a second time, since the likely remedy for that would simply be a third election.
What happens if you violate the law? The probability is you will never get caught. So the odds are with you. This case study follows the initial defeat of a union organizing campaign in Macon followed by second election for which the outcome is uncertain. The outcome has real consequences.
A union could make a dramatic difference in the lives of Macon workers. One union supporter who was terminated following the election laments having left, despite having landed in a better paying position. This was jobs that could help out families in poverty in our community….
But a decade later, they still have no contract. The employer—relying in part on advice from the anti-union Jackson Lewis law firm —engaged in a series of tactics including legal delays, management intimidation, and economic retaliation. Workers signed cards saying they wanted a union election, the union filed the petition for an election, and then the NLRB scheduled a vote.
Immediately following the election, DISH filed complaints with the NLRB asserting that the CWA staff person representing employees at the North Richland Hills location was not an appropriate authority to file an election petition despite his being the director of the local union and the fact that the NLRA does not require a specific type of person to file a petition and contending that actions by a pro-union employee had tainted the election, even though the actions in question took place after voting was completed.
Ultimately, both complaints were dismissed, but it took 18 months to legally verify these facts, delaying certification of the election outcome. However, just prior to the point at which negotiations would have begun, a petition was filed by some employees at the Farmers Branch location—supported by management— calling to decertify the union.
Five years after first organizing, these workers were back at the beginning, ready to begin the collective bargaining process in mid Just six months later, however, DISH put a halt to negotiations. The company announced that it was switching labor attorneys, and that the new attorney would contact the union in Instead, more than a year went by with no communication from the company.
In early , the union repeatedly asked the company to schedule bargaining dates, but was rebuffed. Instead, in April the company declared that the two sides were at an impasse—despite its new attorney never once having met with the union.
But that process took two years. After the company unilaterally imposed its incentive pay system in , DISH employees gradually adapted to the new productivity measures, earning significant wage increases. Unsurprisingly, the impact of these cuts was severe.
Multiple employees reported having to work second jobs, borrow from their relatives, or take out high-interest payday loans to keep their families afloat. Employees described co-workers who moved in with their in-laws, had their cars repossessed, put their k retirement funds up as loan collateral, or stopped answering their phone in hopes of avoiding bill collectors. By the end of , 19 DISH employees had been forced to quit, including most of those who had served as members of the negotiating committee.
The ability of any group of workers to win a fair contract rests primarily on their ability to disrupt production or otherwise pressure the employer through collective action. In a typical campaign, workers engage in acts of solidarity within the workplace—wearing buttons or t-shirts, signing petitions, or holding group meetings.
Often their actions escalate to public outreach activities including leafleting, picketing, staging boycotts, and making appeals to elected officials; ultimately building toward a potential strike. All of these actions depend on employees being united in commitment to their cause, and having confidence in the power of their own collective action.
Unilateral wage and benefit cuts function as an object lesson in the omnipotence of management and the futility of organizing. Finally, the dramatic level of turnover means that many current employees have no knowledge of the union, and with veteran employees banned from educating them, there is little possibility of current employees ever gaining such knowledge. Under such conditions, it is virtually impossible for workers to take the sorts of collective action needed to convince management to sign a fair contract.
They feel like they were lied to, demoralized, betrayed. Nor will reading a statement bring back the union supporters and leaders who quit when their wages were cut or give the newly hired the experience of organizing a union.
What is needed is not an empty promise read out loud, but a legal requirement to settle a fair contract. Labor advocates for decades have proposed a system of neutral arbitration for settling union contracts—particularly first contracts—when the parties cannot reach agreement through traditional means. From the outside, it may seem puzzling that DISH has devoted so much time, energy, and money to fighting this small group of unionized employees.
Given that that union wages are affordable, why has DISH run such a concerted campaign—over so many years—to avoid signing a collective bargaining agreement with its employees? While it may be hard to justify the time and money spent on fighting the union in terms of the costs of this group of employees, this expense may be more logical when understood as an investment in preventing higher wages from spreading to the rest of its workforce.
For the public, the spread of union wages throughout the DISH network would be welcome news indeed. By devoting such intensive resources and dedication to stomping out any potential beachhead of unionization, DISH is focused instead on keeping those 16, employees locked into financial hardship and insecurity. We must restore the ability of American workers to negotiate with their employers if we are to reverse the growing crisis of inequality. Through a combination of legal intimidation and rampant lawbreaking, employers have made a sham of the theoretical right to collective bargaining.
The U. The package of proposals, called the Clean Slate for Worker Power, includes extending labor rights to farmworkers, domestic workers, and independent contractors who are now excluded from federal union rights; mandating a national requirement that employees may only be fired for just cause rather than arbitrarily; prohibiting employers from permanently firing workers who engage in a strike; and enabling workers to engage in sector-wide negotiations rather than single-employer bargaining.
The evisceration of the American middle class, the increasing hardship that most nonprofessional workers face, and the escalating inequality that has come to define our country are not facts of nature over which we lack control.
Congress has the power to reverse this decline and to restore the promise of the American economy by insisting that employers respect the right of workers to organize free from fear or intimidation. Ensuring the right of workers to organize and bargain collectively to secure a fair share of the prosperity that their work creates is the most important step that federal lawmakers can take to restore fairness in the American workplace and broad prosperity across our country.
Lola Loustaunau is a Ph. For example, the average woman now works hours more per year—the equivalent of almost eight weeks of full-time work—than she would have in See, for example, T. The data refers to the regression-based gap between workers covered by a contract who are mostly but not exclusively union members and workers not covered by such a contract. Josh Bivens et al. In fiscal , new unions were certified in NLRB-supervised elections, with a combined total of 47, eligible voters.
NLRB records sometimes make it difficult to identify duplicate records; thus it is possible that some of the elections we counted were duplicates, and the actual total of newly organized workers is less than that reported, but for purposes of this report we use this number as an upper-boundary estimate. It is important to note that our finding almost certainly underestimates the true frequency of illegal employer threats and terminations.
Data on Federal Election Commission enforcement comes from U. In fiscal there were just 1, representation elections conducted under the NLRB, with just under 80, eligible voters.
Hicks-Ponder Co. In Litton Systems, Inc. Consultants universally stress the power of using supervisors to convey anti-union messages to their subordinates. Kaufman and Paula E. There is a remarkable degree of consistency in the themes of employer campaigns over the past 40 years.
Another Management Report article in the same issue p. See Phil Comstock and Maier B. Sheldon Friedman et al. Ithaca, N. Press, , p. The final vote was —, with 16 employees not voting. Advameg, Inc. Employee 1, interview with G. Lafer, May Employee 3, interview with G. Indeed, most employees had no job descriptions, making it all the more difficult to control what type of work one might be directed to do. Apply Filters. Journeyman Apprentice.
Hourly Production Team Member. Assembler - Orlando, FL. SageBeans - Chicago, IL. General Labor. Quick Apply. Quality Supervisor. TekwissenGroup - Detroit, MI. Operations Manager. Auria - Sidney, OH. General Motors - Marion, IN 4. This is an essential role for our union and you will be working as part of a dynamic team. We are on the search for a Director to join our senior leadership team, based in West End in Brisbane, on a permanent basis.
Two positions are ongoing and the other is fixed term for 12 months, with the option of an extension or an ongoing role at the end of 12 months. The Industrial Officer position will be responsible for representing members in the State and Federal jurisdiction in a variety of matters.
We are looking for an enthusiastic, self-motivated person to play a key role contributing towards to the future strategy and growth of the Health Services Union. This is a hands-on role that actively and primarily supports worksite membership recruitment and servicing efforts in coordination with other Organisers and Delegates.
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