Dec. 7—For years, Patti Wickman worked in the packing department of Ohio’s Consolidated Biscuit production plant as a skid loader, stacking crates up to six or seven feet high. “I just tossed them up when the stack got taller than I am,” she says.
But three years ago, when Wickman and her colleagues sought a voice at work to address their employer’s ill-treatment of its staff, Wickman and seven other workers were illegally fired for supporting a union with the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers, according to an administrative law judge of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
Wickman’s struggle to form a union at Consolidated Biscuit illustrates why thousands of workers and their allies are mobilizing in events across the nation this week to highlight the need for the freedom to form unions free from employer harassment and intimidation. The efforts mark Dec. 10 the anniversary of the ratification of the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which recognized the right to join a union and bargain as a basic human right.
‘Sometimes You Have to Stand Up for Yourself’
“People were being treated bad,” says Bill Lawhorn, 49, a 12-year-veteran in Consolidated Biscuit’s receiving department and the first worker fired for union activity. “There was lots of yelling at employees and no respect.” Lawhorn, who now hauls trash for his neighbors and family to try and make ends meet, says he wouldn’t go back to Consolidated without a union. “Sometimes you have to stand up for yourself,” he says.
Despite a 56-page ruling by an administrative law judge in January 2004 ordering the company to rehire the seven workers, management at Consolidated Biscuit continues to fight workers’ efforts to form a union at its plant in McComb, Ohio, 45 miles south of Toledo. Consolidated, whose largest customer is Kraft Nabisco, produces $320 million in cookies and crackers annually.
Although firing employees for exercising their freedom to join a union is illegal in the United States, in 25 percent of organizing campaigns, private-sector employers illegally fire workers because they want to form a union, says Cornell University scholar Kate Bronfenbrenner.
More working people than ever—some 57 million—say they would join a union if they had a chance, according to a survey by Peter D. Hart Research Associates. But often, employer intimidation prevents them from exercising their freedom to form unions. Seeking to change ineffective U.S. labor law that doesn’t adequately address the barriers workers face when forming unions, workers are urging their U.S. representatives and senators to co-sign the Employee Free Choice Act. Introduced by a bipartisan coalition in Congress last April, the Employee Free Choice Act (S. 842 and H.R. 1696) would strengthen protections for workers’ freedom to choose by requiring employers to recognize a union after a majority of workers signs cards authorizing union representation.
Back in McComb, a depressed northwest corner of Ohio, Wickman has been out of work for two years. She has lost her truck and is about to lose her house. But she continues her fight for a union.
“I’m all the time out handbilling at the plant,” she says. “I know what happens with a union—my dad is a proud member of UAW,” says Wickman. “Unions are a big part of my life. To get the benefits you deserve, you have to say, ‘Yes,’ to the union and stand up for your rights,” she says. “I want to see my friends get good benefits. I don’t want them to die there.”
Employer Harassment Included Union-Busters
The Consolidated Biscuit workers’ struggle began in May 2002, when they sought help from the BCTGM in forming a union. In less than a month, some 600 of the 840 eligible employees signed union authorization cards. After the cards were verified, both sides agreed to a union election set for August 2002.
But in the months leading up to the election, the company’s owner, James Appold, hired three union-busting consultants and held dozens of mandatory captive audience meetings.
“They told us that the unions only wanted our dues money,” Lawhorn says.
As a result of Consolidated Biscuit’s intimidation and harassment, workers lost the election. The next day, Appold fired Lawhorn, who had been a key union backer. One day after he was fired, Lawhorn says his Consolidated Biscuit ID picture was posted on the McComb Police Department’s “Most Wanted” board for no reason.
Over the next six months, six other workers who supported the union were fired. BCTGM filed more than 35 unfair labor practice charges along with objections to the election. The NLRB regional office issued more than 40 complaints against Consolidated Biscuit and an administrative law judge heard the charges in fall 2003, more than a year after the election.
In January 2004, Judge Arthur Amchan ruled that Consolidated Biscuit’s “egregious and widespread misconduct,” demonstrated “a general disregard for the employees’ fundamental rights,” and required the company to cease and desist from infringing in any other manner on employees’ rights guaranteed by federal labor laws.
Amchan cited numerous illegal actions by Consolidated Biscuit, including firing employees for union activity, instructing security personnel to call police at the first sign of union activity, erecting signs indicating video surveillance in areas where union supporters met, threatening to go bankrupt if workers voted for the union and requiring employees to remove from their clothing messages supporting the union.
Delays in NLRB Process Highlight Need for Change in U.S. Labor Laws
Consolidated Biscuit immediately filed exceptions to the decision, but the national NLRB has not acted on the appeal for more than two years. “It’s frustrating three years from your election with all these delays,” says John Price, the BCTGM union representative assisting the Consolidated workers.
Since BCTGM’s first set of filings with the regional NLRB, the board has issued another 30 complaints and the union has filed 12 more charges. No hearing date has been set for those charges.
Despite their struggle, the workers remain committed to the union. John Green, another fired union supporter, was terminated after he couldn’t work as a machine operator because of multiple injuries sustained when he fell into a machine. The machine, which runs at 3,200 revolutions per minute, left him with injuries to both shoulders and knees and ruptured his back. But the administrative law judge found the company fired him for union activity.
Green, who now is fighting for worker’s compensation for his injuries—Consolidated Biscuit doesn’t want to pay—says he and the other workers continue to back the union.
“This company would spend $10 million to save $10,” he says. “We’ve got to keep fighting. We’re going to take it all the way.”
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