Community and religious allies are working with union members to back workers’ efforts to build better lives and help call on employers to avoid intimidation and coercion. Here are some examples of recent campaigns.
Montgomery County, Md., Leaders Set Community Standard for Employers
Elected officials, clergy members and community leaders in Montgomery County, Md., in September 2003, formulated a set of guidelines establishing a standard of behavior for employers when workers seek to form unions. The nonbinding community standard is designed to ensure that companies who do business in the county play fair in respecting the fundamental human rights of their employees to form unions.
Community leaders mobilized to develop the standard is necessary because area workers at Comcast, Pioneer and Journal Newspapers were harassed, intimidated and coerced when trying to form unions at their workplace. The guidelines protect workers from harassment or punishment for forming unions, allows workers who support forming a union equal time to meet with co-workers and prohibits the use of taxpayer money on anti-worker consultants. The guidelines also allow workers to form unions via a card-check, a fairer alternative to the contentious and delay-prone National Labor Relations Board process.
Chicago Aldermen Make AT&T Respect the Freedom to Organize
Forming an alliance with consumer allies, activists with Electrical Workers Local 21 in Chicago won an important victory when the Chicago City Council in June 2000 included workers' rights protections in its approval of transferring the city's cable contract to the newly merged AT&T Comcast Corp.
In its resolution conditionally approving the merger, the city council also urges the company to adopt a code of conduct governing labor-management relations and maintain labor harmony.
Union leaders mobilized members to attend city council committee meetings and meet with aldermen and the cable administrator. Leaders of the Chicago Federation of Labor lobbied key elected officials as well.
Members of IBEW Local 21 working for AT&T Broadband have been without a contract for several years, while another group of 2,800 workers at the company has been trying to win a voice on the job amid the company's anti-union campaign.
"Fighting and winning against multinational corporations like AT&T requires taking a broader view," said Local 21 President Ron Kastner. "We must involve all of our community partners, starting with elected officials, to hold outlaw companies like AT&T accountable for what they do in our communities."
Back to the Top
College Students, Senators Help Workers Beat Anti-Union Campaign at New Era Cap
Workers at New Era Cap Co. in Derby, N.Y., were victorious with the help of student solidarity and intervention from elected officials. The members of Communications Workers of America Local 14177 sew caps for many universities and major league baseball teams, but went on strike in July 2001 when the company unilaterally slashed wages and refused to bargain for a fair contract. In early June, the union and company reached a strong contract agreement.
As part of the workers’ campaign, anti-sweatshop student activists on 10 campuses persuaded administrators to drop contracts with the company. In addition, students at the Workers Rights Consortium (the nonprofit group created by colleges, students and labor rights experts to help enforce campus manufacturing codes of conduct) researched conditions at the factory and released a report in August 2001 that documents allegations of health and safety problems at the plant as well as the company’s unrelenting anti-union campaign.
The students’ involvement has “had a very positive effect on the members,” said Local 14177 President Jane Howald. “The workers said it felt good for someone to listen and care about what happens to them,” Howald said, adding that the victory would not have been possible without the students’ aid.
Elected officials also played a key role. U.S. Sens. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) wrote a letter to Bud Selig, commissioner of Major League Baseball, urging him to hold New Era to a high standard.
Back to the Top
UAW Workers Join Together and Win Organizing Rights
A ground-breaking win by UAW in June 2002 opens the door for 8,000 independent auto parts workers employed at 26 factories to win a voice on the job by a card-check, the expedited process in which an employer agrees to recognize the union after a majority of workers sign union authorization cards. After a two-day strike, workers at the independent auto parts supplier Johnson Controls Inc.’s (JCI) plants in Shreveport, La., Oklahoma City, Okla., and Earth City, Mo., ratified a strong first contract. The company recognized the union for its 155 Norwood, Ohio, workers based on a card-check—and also agreed to remain neutral and honor workers’ choices by card-check at 26 other plants employing 8,000 workers.
Card-checks are a fairer alternative to the often contentious and drawn-out National Labor Relations Board election process, which gives employers the opportunity to launch brutal anti-union campaigns. UAW leaders say JCI’s new approach to labor relations will benefit workers and the company. “JCI wasted a lot of time trying to figure out ways to deny workers their right to join a union,” said Lloyd Mahaffey, director of UAW Region 2B, which covers the state of Ohio. “I think their new approach, which respects workers’ rights, is going to be much more productive.”
UAW President Ron Gettelfinger said, “When people join our union, we say they’re joining an organization of workers who are going to be there whenever necessary—and we mean it.”
For more information, visit www.uaw.org.
Back to the Top
Combining Political, Legislative and Organizing Strategies for Victory in Washington State
Union activists in Washington State are showing how political and legislative action can pave the way for organizing victories. Because union members mobilized to elect worker-friendly politicians to the state legislature and then pushed for fair organizing laws, more than 50,000 workers will have the opportunity to win a voice on the job in the coming months.
For three years, a 49-to-49 partisan tie strangled the Washington State House of Representatives. Union activists couldn’t move any pro-worker legislation. Then two legislators—one from each party—stepped down, triggering a special election in November 2001. In one district, it was clear a pro-worker candidate would win, but it was an uphill climb in the other district. Union leaders in the Evergreen State seized the opportunity.
“I knew if we could get that district, that would change the balance of power in Olympia and then we could get some things done,” said Roy Wilkinson, a member of Machinists District Lodge 751-Local E. For three months, hundreds of union members like Wilkinson knocked on voters’ doors and made phone calls. Leaders of the Washington State Labor Council worked closely with the Snohomish County Labor Council, where the contested Everett district was centered. The worker-backed candidate won by 12 points and broke the tie in the statehouse.
Five months after their political victory, union activists celebrated a landmark legislative success. In March 2002, the governor signed bills passed by a closely divided legislature giving state employees full collective bargaining rights and extending similar rights to four-year college faculty, homecare workers and 3,700 graduate employees at the University of Washington who organized with the UAW last year—and who couldn’t achieve final victory until they successfully passed the state law formally allowing them to form a union.
Some 50,000 state, university and homecare workers could form unions and gain a voice at work within a year, thanks to the legislation, estimates Rick Bender, president of the state federation that spearheaded the political and legislative campaigns. “Those workers will no longer be collectively begging,” he said. Similar victories in Maryland and Missouri have helped 6,700 workers win a real voice on the job. “Now we’ll have the same rights millions of workers in the United States have,” said Katie Nelson, an AFSCME member who collects child support payments at Washington State’s Department of Social and Health Services. Because the new law allows state workers to bargain for wages and benefits (in addition to the non-economic issues they had the right to negotiate before), “We can pull state employees up so that they are no longer eligible for the public assistance benefits they give out,” Nelson said. Winning the 2002 legislative campaign is helping union activists from the state of Washington build for the future. Leaders are planning to run get-out-the-vote campaigns in 14 state legislative districts during this fall’s election season, when activists also may have to fend off a business-sponsored ballot initiative to reverse the collective bargaining laws. When more workers join unions, the victories will spiral, Bender predicts. “As there is more organizing going on, that will build our strength and help us pass even more progressive legislation,” he said.
Back to the Top
