By Laureen Lazarovici
Union members mobilize to build support in Congress for workers’ freedom to form unions.
When Gary Jessup worked at JPS Elastomerics in Winston-Salem, N.C., making industrial roofing, he realized he needed a voice on the job to get respect from management. He got involved with a campaign to form a union with the Teamsters. Before long, more than 80 percent of his co-workers signed union authorization cards, signaling their desire to join the union.
During the six weeks between the time workers filed the cards and the union election, managers executed a chillingly effective anti-worker campaign. Jessup says supervisors held captive-audience meetings to dissuade workers from supporting the union and threatened to close the plant. “If a man is signing your paycheck, it’s hard not to believe him,” says Jessup. On a winter day in 1998, the workers lost their union election by a few votes.
Faced with intimidation, harassment and retaliation for trying to form a union, the workers could not rely on federal laws to address these injustices, Jessup says. “It was as if we didn’t have labor laws at all,” he says. “We need to put some teeth in the law.”
Today, Jessup and hundreds of union activists like him are mobilizing to reform labor law, building support for federal legislation to ensure when a majority of employees in a workplace decides to form a union, they can do so without the debilitating obstacles employers now use to block their free choice.
Through national and local unions, state federations and central labor councils across the country, union members are mobilizing to phone, fax, e-mail and visit their members of Congress and urge them to support the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). The bill (S. 1925 and H.R. 3619), introduced in November by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), will allow employees to choose freely whether to form unions when a majority signs authorization cards. It will provide mediation and arbitration for first-contract disputes and establish stronger penalties for violation of employee rights when workers seek to form a union and during first- contract negotiations.
In less than seven months, union members have convinced more than 230 U.S. senators and representatives to co-sponsor the bill. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) was among the first to sign on. As working families mobilize for the November elections, they will examine where candidates stand on workers’ freedom to form unions. During a national workplace week of action June 28 to July 4, workers are marking Independence Day by distributing fliers to their co-workers comparing the commitment of candidates to this crucial issue. They also are sending postcards to Kerry thanking him for his support of the legislation—and to President George W. Bush asking him to back the EFCA.
“Behind the closed doors of the workplaces of America, workers face incredible—often ruthless—opposition when they try to come together in a union,” says AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. “Before casting a vote, every working person should look first to see where the candidate stands on this urgently needed legislation.”
Signing up co-sponsors
During a meeting with Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.) at the congressman’s Raleigh office in April, Jessup described the obstacles he and his co-workers struggled to overcome when they tried to form a union and discussed the ways unions help build stronger communities. The face-to-face contact helped convince Miller to co-sponsor the EFCA.
“You can’t make the case without the workers,” says North Carolina State AFL-CIO President James Andrews. State federation and central labor council leaders not only mobilized workers to meet with members of Congress, they also helped activists call their representatives and circulate petitions at worksites and community events. Members of local retiree groups and the local chapter of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, the AFL-CIO constituency group for African American trade unionists, signed letters to members of Congress and collected signatures on petitions.
By May, union activists were achieving their goals: Five of the state’s six Democratic congressmen—Frank Ballance, Bob Etheridge, Miller, David Price and Melvin Watt—agreed to co-sponsor EFCA.
Although most co-sponsors of the legislation are Democrats, union members are working hard to win support from Republicans as well, arguing that the freedom to form unions is not a partisan issue. In upstate New York, union activists with the Jefferson, Lewis and St. Lawrence Counties Central Trades and Labor Council and the Northeast Central Labor Council successfully encouraged Rep. John McHugh (R-N.Y.) to co-sponsor the bill. Union members called, faxed and e-mailed McHugh, who has a history of supporting workers trying to form unions in his district.
During the AFL-CIO’s Industrial Union Council conference in February in the nation’s capital, Mike St. Thomas, president of UAW Local 465 in Massena, N.Y., met with McHugh. “He heard firsthand accounts from people who went through organizing campaigns and suffered intimidation and harassment,” says St. Thomas. “He said he didn’t realize this happened. When members of Congress hear from their constituents who’ve faced obstacles when trying to form unions, they listen, St. Thomas says. “They really need people like us to help them understand,” he says.
Educating union members
The Steelworkers, along with their strategic partners at PACE International Union, are using their Rapid Response network to convince members of Congress to co-sponsor the Employee Free Choice Act. Rapid Response involves union members who educate their co-workers about key issues and mobilizes them to take political action. Pinpointing congressional districts where the two unions are strong, union leaders fax and e-mail 20,000 Rapid Response team leaders one-page InfoAlerts about the obstacles workers face when they try to form unions and how the EFCA would help.
After team leaders help union members understand the key issues, the leaders are ready to mobilize their co-workers. Many take cell phones to the shop floor and help union members call their members of Congress on the spot. Workers on the overnight shifts fill up voice mails at congressional offices. In addition, USWA members have visited congressional offices and stood up at town hall meetings to discuss the obstacles workers face when they try to form unions. These strategies have helped attract nearly a dozen co-sponsors from across the country.
Back in Kernersville, N.C., Gary Jessup now is a member of IBT Local 391, working on the dock at Roadway. He says he will continue working to pass the EFCA because being in a union has improved his life and his community, an opportunity all workers should have. “Before I had to scrape by week to week,” he says. “Now, my standard of living has gone up. It goes beyond wages, benefits and retirement, though,” Jessup says. With a union, “you’ve got a voice on your job.” @
| |   | Why Do Workers Need the Employee Free Choice Act? | Take this quiz and find out! | 1. What percent of private-sector employers actively opposes workers' efforts to join a union? a. 50 percent
b. 75 percent
c. 90+ percent | 4. It is legal for an employer to call mandatory meetings on company time during organizing campaigns to present its anti-union case. 1. True
2. False | 2. What percent of private-sector employers requires workers to attend anti-union meetings? a. 50 percent
b. 75 percent
c. 92 percent | 5. A worker can be disciplined or even fired for asking a question about employment practices during such a meeting. 1. True
2. False | 3. What percent of private-sector employers uses supervisors to urge individual employees to vote against the union? a. 40 percent
b. 60 percent
c. 78 percent | 6. If a worker is fired during an organizing drive, how long, on average, does it take the National Labor Relations Board and a federal appeals court to hear the case and compel the company to rehire the worker? a. Six months
b. 14 months
c. Three years |
Sources: Kate Bronfenbrenner, Uneasy Terrain: The Impact of Capital Mobility on Workers, Wages and Union Organizing, Cornell University, Sept. 6, 2000; National Labor Relations Act; U.S. Department of Labor and Commerce, Commission on the Future of Worker-Management Relations Fact Finding Report, May 1994.
Answers: 1. c; 2. c; 3. c; 4. True; 5. True in many circumstances. Specific factual situations can affect legality; 6. c.
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