[Peace-discuss] right to association, right to a union

[Ricky Baldwin]

Hey folks,


Not sure who’s doing AWARE’s agenda for Sunday meetings
these days, but I’d like to put an endorsement request out for discussion.  It’s from Jobs With Justice, to which AWARE
belongs, and which was instrumental in starting US Labor Against the War.
 
Jobs With Justice and many other organizations are currently
pushing – and trying to collect a million postcards in support of – national  legislation to protect an important right of
association that has been under severe assault because it threatens the steep American
gradient of power between employer and employee: a workers’ right to join with
his or her co-workers in a union.  The
bill is called the “Employee Free Choice Act,” and it’s nothing to sneeze at.
 
Since 1935, in response to mass uprisings of workers – many
of them thrown out of work in the Great Depression – the US Congress enacted
and the President signed the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), also known as
the “Wagner Act,” establishing the right to form, join and participate in unions
as the official policy of the US government.  It was a compromise, enacted to stave off a feared revolution of the
type that other countries had experienced, notably in 1848 and 1917-1925.  It did not cover everyone.  It specifically excluded large classes of
workers – agricultural and domestic workers, both much more numerous than today
– mainly as a means of cutting out Southern blacks and poor whites from the New Deal.
 
But in the wake of passage, union membership increased in
the US to over 30 percent, raising the overall standards of wages, safety on the job,
etc., even for non-union workers.  Union-sponsored legislation, like the OSHA Act in 1970 – which has saved
thousands of workers’ lives even with its faults, began improving the lives of
all workers.  But it was no panacea, and
it was certainly not invulnerable to attack from anti-worker forces. 
 
The Wagner Act and its many “reforms” added afterwards, when
the threat of revolution had cooled, also took the US down a different path than other
industrialized nations have taken.  There
are two legal doctrines concerning workers that most Americans have never heard
of, and not because they slept through high school social studies classes.  One is called the “master-servant”
relationship, which basically says if your employer orders you to do something,
you have to do it (with some minor limitations, obviously, for illegal
activity, etc.) or you could be disciplined or fired – there are few
exceptions, including civil service regulations for some public employees, and
union contracts.  
 
Second, workers who are unrepresented by a union are “employed at will,” meaning they can
be fired “at any time for any reason or no reason.”  Obviously there are a few legal restrictions
there, too: racial, sexual or religious discrimination, etc.  Can you be fired even if you did nothing
wrong?  Absolutely.  For voting Democrat or Republican or
Green?  If you’re not a public employee
and you don’t have a union, absolutely.  You can be fired because you wear socks the boss doesn’t like.  You can be fired just because.  Does this really happen?  Yep - the relative operation of the employers' "economic interest" can be debated, but it happens - and there is
nothing illegal about it – at least not in this country.
 
Workers in the US who are eligible for union rights and who wish
to take full advantage of union protections can’t just sign up and BANG they
get union rights.  No, workers in the US have
to win an election process – one in which workers could be prohibited from
union organizing on the job, union organizers could be barred from the premises
entirely, and employers and managers were permitted to hold “captive audience”
meetings to slander the union and threaten mass layoffs or plant closings.  Employers and managers also frequently call
individuals into the office for a nice, quiet, intimidating “chat,” one on
one.  Employers frequently fire the
ringleaders if they can identify them, even though this is illegal (it’s hard
to prove), and hire union-busting law firms to run intimidation campaigns, spy
on workers, spread rumors and sew any kind of dissent they can think of.
 
Employers may also hire new employees – such as family
members – who they know to oppose unionization, or to whom they can promise the
moon, and thus dilute the vote.  They may
also declare that certain employees are “supervisors” and thus ineligible to
vote, and so on.
 
Penalties for employer misbehavior are woefully inadequate:
often the sentence is posting a notice in the workplace stating that the
employer has violated such and such provision, blah, blah, blah.  Penalties for the workers and their unions
who violate guidelines, on the other hand, can amount to one of the worst
things that can happen, besides being fired and having a pay cut: they lose
their right to a union.
 
Even if the workers win a union election, employers may keep
them tied up in court for years afterwards or may refuse to bargain a fair
contract.  According to the law, if the
union cannot win a contract with the employer there could be another election
to get rid of unionization, and under the oppressive circumstances that prevail
the disgruntled employees may change their votes (if they are even the same
workers – employers often use this time to drive off the strong union
supporters).
 
So what does the Employee Free Choice Act do about all this?  It doesn’t address all of it.  There are a lot of things I’d like to see
fixed in labor law, primarily who’s eligible.  But one thing it does establish is a right that Canadians, for example,
take for granted.  If more than half the
workers at a workplace want a union, they get it.  Period.  They sign a card or petition and it’s done.  If they don’t want a long drawn-out expensive
election, rife with intimidation and legal battles, they don’t have to have to
do it that way.
 
The bill would also strengthen penalties on employers who
coerce their employees or otherwise violate their right to join a union.  And it establishes a mediation and
arbitration if workers and their employer cannot agree on a first contract.  But the main provision is establishing the
much beleaguered right to unionization in the first place, and employers are
already fighting tooth and nail to block this bill.  That says something, right there.

 
AWARE can help by endorsing this campaign.  It costs no money, just a decision.  And I’ll bring postcards for anyone who’d
like to sign one.  Thanks.
 
Ricky
 
 
"Only those who do nothing make no mistakes." - Peter Kropotkin



      
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