Union Protest Interrupts Mortgage Bankers Summit

First Posted: 01/19/11

WASHINGTON -- About 200 union workers interrupted a meeting of mortgage bankers at a posh hotel Wednesday.

The protest -- aimed at the Pulte Group, one of the nation's largest homebuilders -- quickly turned into a scrum as workers wearing hardhats and shouting through bullhorns overwhelmed the security staff at the JW Marriott, bursting into a crowded conference room before a stunned crowd of bankers.

Shouting "Where are the jobs?" and "Where is the money?" the protesters from the Sheet Metal Workers' International Association and the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, many in overalls and helmets, said taxpayers have provided $900 million in tax breaks to Pulte with the aim of creating jobs. They said they haven't seen the results they were promised.

"Those tax breaks were supposed to create jobs," Wayne Peworchik, one of the protesters, said. "That was President Obama's and Congress's intent."

"Instead, Pulte laid off workers," Peworchik said.

Marc Norberg, the union official who led the protest, said they protested the summit held by the Mortgage Bankers Association of America because "this is where Pulte is, and the mortgage bankers should know.

"Pulte used that money for land acquisition, and that land isn't being used," Norberg said.

He added that the union has been targeting Pulte for years, but the homebuilder won't meet with them.

Union workers said they're with the AFL-CIO, which played a part in the protest.

The roughly 10-minute demonstration ended once more security officers were brought in.

Labor Board Overturns Vote by Sandwich Shop Workers

Good news on the Jimmy John's organizing drive by the IWW in Minnesota.  As long as employers can violate the rights of workers in a representation campaign and get away with a "we won't do it again," organizing campaigns will be very hard to win.  Let's hope the workers can win the re-vote.

The New York Times

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

Published: January 10, 2011

The National Labor Relations Board on Monday announced a settlement that sets aside an Oct. 22 election in which workers at 10 Jimmy John’s sandwich shops in the Minneapolis area voted 87 to 85 against joining the Industrial Workers of the World.

The labor board announced the settlement after the union filed more than a dozen charges against Miklin Enterprises, which runs the 10 restaurants, accusing the company of breaking the law in fighting the organizing drive, one of the few unionization campaigns in the fast-food industry.

The union accused Miklin of illegally denying a raise to a union supporter, improperly interrogating employees about unionization and taking down union literature from bulletin boards. The union also claimed that the company had improperly asserted that union supporters sabotaged a restaurant refrigerator when there was no proof of union involvement.

In the settlement, Miklin promised not to engage in any of those activities in the future and not to enforce rules more tightly against pro-union employees. In the settlement, the company did not admit to violating the National Labor Relations Act, and the labor board said its approval of the settlement did not mean that the employer had violated the act.

The settlement allows the Industrial Workers of the World to ask for another unionization vote within 18 months, with the employer promising to let the vote take place within 30 days of the request.

The I.W.W., known as the Wobblies, was a powerful far-left union a century ago, but now is far smaller and weaker and often seeks to organize groups of workers that other unions overlook.

Officials from Miklin Enterprises said that the board’s lawyers had conducted a thorough investigation and that “approximately half the allegations” including those of illegal firings “were either found by the agency to have no merit or were withdrawn by the union.”

Miklin said it could have attended a hearing to contest the charges, but “we believe that investing in an expensive process to determine a final outcome was not a prudent use of company assets, despite our belief that we had strong defenses to the claims.”

Micah Buckley-Farlee, a delivery driver at Jimmy John’s who supports the union, said, “There can now be no doubt that our rights were severely violated, but we’re willing to put the past behind us.”

The pro-union workers complained of earning the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour or slightly above that, working unpredictable and often short shifts and having to face the anger of managers when they called in sick.

The labor board said the settlement agreement would be posted in work areas and be read to employees either by the company president or by a labor board employee in the presence of the company president.

Good-Bye American Dream: New Assault Against Unions

Watch the Missouri Legislature very carefully this year.  The new leadership in both chambers seems to believe that working people have had it too good and need to be brought down for the benefit of the economy and improving the business climate.

by Jonathan Tasini

Tuesday 04 of January, 2011

The political adage is correct: elections have consequences. We know about the takeover of the House by Republicans and the hit Democrats will take in the reapportionment process. But, the greatest threat to the American Dream is going to come from a determined assault on the labor movement.

  The New York Times has this today, a story that has been covered before but has new specifics:

Faced with growing budget deficits and restive taxpayers, elected officials from Maine to Alabama, Ohio to Arizona, are pushing new legislation to limit the power of labor unions, particularly those representing government workers, in collective bargaining and politics.

And...

For example, Republican lawmakers in Indiana, Maine, Missouri and seven other states plan to introduce legislation that would bar private sector unions from forcing workers they represent to pay dues or fees, reducing the flow of funds into union treasuries. In Ohio, the new Republican governor, following the precedent of many other states, wants to ban strikes by public school teachers.

Some new governors, most notably Scott Walker of Wisconsin, are even threatening to take away government workers’ right to form unions and bargain contracts.

"We can no longer live in a society where the public employees are the haves and taxpayers who foot the bills are the have-nots," Mr. Walker, a Republican, said in a speech. "The bottom line is that we are going to look at every legal means we have to try to put that balance more on the side of taxpayers."

And...

Of all the new governors, John Kasich, Republican of Ohio, appears to be planning the most comprehensive assault against unions. He is proposing to take away the right of 14,000 state-financed child care and home care workers to unionize. He also wants to ban strikes by teachers, much the way some states bar strikes by the police and firefighters.

 Let's be very clear about this. The attack against public sector unions is an attack on you and me, whether you work in the public sector or not. And if we don't see that, if we allow the bogus arguments about the wages and pensions of public sector workers being at the heart of our state fiscal crisis, then, we will end up paying the price.

 Twenty years or so ago, many of us argued that so-called "free trade" was a threat to every person, whether your job was directly in the cross-hairs of a company ready to pick up and move to China. People scoffed--and, frankly, many people in the public sector thought, "that 'free trade" stuff is not my problem--government jobs can't move abroad." Yes, it is true--government jobs can't move, mostly, abroad (I say, "mostly" because you can still outsource billing and computerization work).

 But, so-called "free trade" is the same side of the coin as the attack against public sector workers.

 It is a single message put out by the people who push the levers of the economy: we want a world where no one has any semblance of protection at work. You don't get to belong to a union. You don't get to fight for a decent paycheck or pension. And, instead, it's every man and woman for his or herself and everyone is going to work for a steadily declining paycheck with no benefits--and what we, the corporate and financial elite, decide is fair. 
  
 We have, as I've pointed out, reached a completely upside-down world, an insane world in which the people--the workers--who have been robbed are being asked to foot the bill. Our economy has been drained of its great wealth by a systematic looting that has gone on for 30 years. In the most recent chapter of the economic crisis, a group of incompetent, greedy financiers obliterated trillions of dollars of wealth and cast millions of people out of their jobs.

  And who should pay for this robbery, this foolishness, this immoral behavior?

  The people who got screwed. The people who had nothing to do with triggering the economic crisis and were innocent by-standers.

 Part of the problem, frankly, rests with our own party and some of the dumb rhetoric we buy into. We have Democrats and even former union leaders who are selling the phony deficit and debt "crisis". We have people trying to sell completely dumb slogans like "shared sacrifice". Many don't even realize, I think, how they have simply bought the framing of this debate--and are harming the very people I am sure they believe they speak for.

 It's worth quoting here the criticism made by Pastor Martin Niemöller of the German intellectuals who ignored the Nazi rise to power in the 1930s: "In Germany they first came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me —and by that time no one was left to speak up."

  For all of those who are being swept up by the hysteria of the deficit and debt "crisis" and those calling for shared sacrifice and those who are wagging their fingers at public workers for getting decent pay and benefits, be very very clear:

  They are coming for you.

Flight Attendants Charge Delta With Election Intimidation

Here is the latest on the Delta Airlines election.  It looks like a classic anti-union campaign run by well-paid union busters.  

Labor Notes, Jan. 3, 2011

Delta flight attendants have submitted more than 150 reports to the government that they were coerced, intimidated, or influenced by Delta Airlines during their recent union election. They are asking for a re-vote.

The election was tallied November 3 with 9,216 in favor of union representation and 9,544 against, a 49.2 to 50.8 percent split. Turnout was remarkably high at 94 percent.

Delta “coerced and intimidated Flight Attendants through a relentless campaign that seeped into every facet of the…workplace and regularly reached into Flight Attendants’ homes,” the flight attendants union (AFA-CWA) wrote in a November appeal to the National Mediation Board, which conducts airline union elections.

The airline used company computers as voting machines and rewrote the NMB’s voting instructions, the union’s motion states. The brief also charges that Delta conditioned raises on the defeat of the union.

The Machinists (IAM), which sought to represent 30,000 ticket agents and baggage handlers, estimates that Delta spent as much as $38 million in its successful anti-union campaign. They have also appealed to the board.

Delta merged with unionized Northwest Airlines in 2008. For Northwest flight attendants, the vote was a matter of preserving more than 60 years of collective bargaining rights. For Delta flight attendants, it was about gaining the benefits of being a union member.

When the vote was counted, those flight attendants who had a union contract immediately lost its protection. Only pilots and flight dispatchers are now organized at Delta.

CONTAMINATED LABORATORY

The NMB calls for “laboratory conditions” from the time an employer is aware of an organizing drive until the representational dispute has been settled. Laboratory conditions have been described by board members as the conditions necessary to ensure employee free choice—free of coercion, intimidation, and influence.

As a Delta flight attendant I can personally attest to the accuracy of many of the charges mentioned in the AFA-CWA brief.

The experience began at the employee parking lot, where signs on employee buses read: “Decision 2010, you must vote to be counted.” At first this slogan doesn’t come across as intimidating or coercive, but it was just a small piece of the puzzle.

Once flight attendants arrived in the lounge, they were welcomed by managers wearing black polo shirts with the “Decision 2010” slogan. Inside, a dozen signs and posters awaited you, one banner so big it barely fit the wall. The signs gave incorrect statements about NMB decertification procedures and flight attendant pay comparisons, and said we “don’t need a third party.” The union-busting playbook was deployed full force.

WHO RAN THIS ELECTION?

Once you logged in to the company website to clock in, check your company email and schedule, or look at your paycheck, you were again bombarded.

First, a pop-up came on the screen reminding you to vote. When you clicked on the message, it didn’t simply take you to the NMB website to vote. Instead you were directed to a page dedicated to convincing flight attendants to vote no.

Daily emails from management (probably written by the union-busting law firm Ford & Harrison) were also sent to the accounts we check for important work-related information.

Delta sent a total of 11 mailers to our homes, some cleverly made to look like important employee benefit enrollment information so we would open them.

Most flight attendants also received management calls at home; some reported as many as three calls.

Some were convinced that Delta was running the election, and many were concerned that Delta would know how they voted.

Surveillance on the job became so extreme that I began counting how many times management walked by when I was speaking to other employees about the benefits of union representation. In an employee lounge, a supervisor walked by 50 times in a three-hour period.

I also heard first-hand accounts from co-workers who didn’t have the courage to report incidents. These included one-on-one meetings behind closed doors about union representation and being treated differently because they were union supporters.

Laboratory conditions?

Delta’s response to the allegations is due December 21.

There’s some hope for a remedy: the NMB unanimously ruled earlier this year that similar tactics Delta deployed against simulator technicians required a re-run election.

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Simone Cerasa is a Delta flight attendant.