Last week, representatives of seven labor unions met in St. Louis to found an alternative to the AFL-CIO called the Change To Win Coalition. Their plan is to devote as much of their resources as possible to organizing non-union workers in industries that cannot go overseas.
It won't be easy, but workers need unions.
Under current law, if you work in the private sector and don't have a contract,. you are what is called an "at will employee." That means that the employer can fire an employee or the employee can quit at will. In other words, you can get fired for no good reason.
Federal law protects employees from being fired if they can prove that they were victims of discrimination based on age, race, sex or religion or for trying to organize a union, and probably a couple of other reasons that I don't know about. To get your job back, you have to sue. That takes time and money. Most employers know that the person suing has the burden of proof, so most of the time, you are out of luck.
Employers also know that there are other people who need work, so if you don't like the wages or working conditions, they can always hire someone else.
Workers in union shops have contracts. The contract not only spells out wages and hours and working conditions, but it gives reasons that an employee can be fired and what procedure the company has to go through to fire someone. And it spells out a binding grievance procedure if an employee believes the company has violated the contract.
Back in the mid-1970s I worked at a now-closed factory that made hospital beds and the insides of sleeper sofas. The United Steelworkers of America represented us. I was fired and immediately filed a grievance. The company looked at my grievance, realized I would win, and the personnel director called me up.
"We've decided to take you back."
It was early morning and I was lying in bed with my wife and three-month old baby.
When do you I go back?"
"Can you come now?"
"Tomorrow," I said.
The company had to pay me back pay, so it didn't cost me anything to wait an extra day.
That's what the contract said, and the personnel director knew it.
That was one sweet day.
Human resource executives don't want to lose any power, so they often do everything they can legally to keep unions out.
In some companies, the job descriptions for management positions include a phrase like "must work to keep (name of company) a union-free environment."
As someone who participated in a union organizing drive recently, I know it won't be easy.
I was a reporter for the North County Journal and was part of an organizing drive there.
We needed a union. I was one of the higher paid reporters there and made $11.25 an hour, less than the average unskilled union factory worker, and we had heavier workloads than at other newspapers. We were supposed to crank out 10 stories a week.
Under federal labor law, 30 percent of workers in a bargaining unit must sign cards saying they want a union. Then the National Labor Relations Board supervises an election.
Pulitzer Corporation, which then owned the Journals, hired King & Ballow, a law firm that practices what it calls "preventive labor law." That means it has developed a winning formula for keeping unions out of workplaces and every newspaper that faces an organizing drive hires King & Ballow. It even tells managers what to say in meetings, "I felt hurt personally when I heard you wanted a union." The firm has developed slide shows to show small groups. The most outspoken union supporters went last so we wouldn't have time to formulate a response.
And then if you win an election, they have procedures for stalling the negotiations long enough to call an election to vote you out.
Not long after we lost our election by a single vote, I quit. A few months later, the Journals offered three of the leaders of the organizing drive cash bonuses to quit if they promised not to talk publicly about the Journals. None of the leaders of the organizing drive still work for the Journals.
Not long after that, one anti-union employee, an ad salesman who had persuaded others to vote against the union, was fired. He had failed to increase his ad sales over the previous year (something the Journals required) and the union fought to change. I think he may have had second thoughts about his stand against the union.
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