Eight Union Victories and New Kaiser Election Ordered



8 Union Victories Progressives Should Be Watching--And Learning From 
 
By Erik Loomis, 

AlterNet

Posted on August 10, 2011

http://www.alternet.org/story/151974/8_union_victories_progressives_should_be_watching--and_learning_from

We always hear that unions are in trouble. But that's
not the whole story.

While nearly one of every three American workers were
union members in 1945, today only 6.9 percent of private
sector employees have union representation, a historic
low. Tea Party governors like Wisconsin's Scott Walker
have pushed anti-union bills through state legislatures.
Wisconsin's bill stripped public employees of most of
their collective bargaining rights and was the most
significant direct attack against unions by a leading
politician since Ronald Reagan crushed the air traffic
controllers strike in 1981.

Yet despite the odds, over the past few months unions
have achieved significant victories around the nation.
Workers continue to fight for better wages, job
security, safe workplaces, and health care, regardless
of the struggles unions face. Their long-term struggles
have not changed. But their success rate may be
improving.

Why is this? The terrible economy may have convinced
more workers that standing together with their fellow
employees is the best chance they have to hold on to
middle-class dreams. The less-negative media climate
surrounding unions after the draconian anti-union bills
in Wisconsin and Ohio may have helped.

Some of this success may also come from the structural
changes within the National Labor Relations Board that
have helped level the playing field for workers.
President Obama has disappointed many unionists in his
administration. He did not push very hard for the
Employee Free Choice Act, and AFL-CIO President Richard
Trumka has expressed frustration with the Democratic
Party for its continued rightward tilt. But behind the
scenes, Obama's appointees to the NLRB, Craig Becker and
Mark Pearce, have reenergized the board, and the recent
NLRB decision to expedite union elections, undermining
employer attempts to intimidate workers, brought howls
of protest from corporations.

Here are eight recent examples of forward momentum for
organized labor:

1. Writers Guild Organizes Writers for Cable

In the past week, the Writers' Guild of America, East,
has had two significant victories. Writers at the Onion
News Network television show on the Independent Film
Channel successfully negotiated a collective bargaining
agreement that provides retroactive pay increases, as
well as pension and health insurance, to workers.

The Writers Guild has also targeted cable television
writers in recent campaigns, winning victories to
represent workers at Animal Planet, Food Network,
National Geographic, and Travel Channel. (Read
AlterNet's coverage of the WGA victories here.)

Lowell Peterson, executive director of the Writers Guild
of America, East, said of the importance of organizing
cable TV writers, "Most work in basic cable TV is
nonunion so working conditions are much less favorable
than in Writers Guild shops. No health or pension
benefits, grueling hours at low pay. Writers and
producers shuffle between companies, and the most
effective way to improve conditions is to organize
multiple companies at one time, so that is what we are
doing. Hundreds of writers and producers are eager to
join the Writers Guild because our members know what
it's like to be devoted to creating the best possible
content and at the same time earning a reasonable
living."

2. Ikea

In late July, workers at a Danville, Virginia Ikea
furniture factory voted overwhelmingly to join the
International Association of Machinists and Aerospace
Workers. With European companies moving factories to
anti-union and relatively low-wage states in the
American South, the Ikea victory is a significant step
toward unionizing those workers. Ikea found its
anti-union efforts hamstrung by its own image as a
company whose products appeal to political progressives.
Using the most draconian anti-union tactics threatened
to undermine the brand.

This is an interesting paradox for Ikea. Their marketing
scheme in the United States appeals to the urban
consumer, often politically liberal, who sees Sweden as
a democratic-socialist model. But Ikea was awful to
these Virginia workers. Its workers cited low wages,
mandatory overtime, long working hours, and even racism
against African-American employees as reasons to join
the union. This victory is also significant for its
location--southern Virginia has one of the nation's
lowest concentrations of union members, so a major
victory here could be a sign of real change coming to
the traditionally anti-union South.

3. UFCW Victories in Clothing Stores

Similarly to Ikea, sales clerks in New York branches of
the Swedish clothing chain H&M joined the United Food &
Commercial Workers last month. Unlike Ikea, which has
vigorously fought unions across the United States and
Europe, H&M played to its progressive image by refusing
to force an election after a majority of workers signed
union cards. They thought it a bad marketing strategy to
alienate many of their consumers to keep out a union
that will barely affect the chain's bottom line.

UFCW has worked hard to expand its membership in the
service economy with some significant successes. Retail
workers are hard to organize because they often don't
see themselves in the jobs long-term, but their working
conditions are often poor and in an economy with
increasingly limited options, UFCW has real
opportunities to unionize these workplaces. Its
affiliate union, the Retail, Wholesale, and Department
Store Workers, just succeeded in organizing 1,400
workers at Filene's Basement stores and a distribution
center in New York, suggesting a longer trend of
success.

4. Rite-Aid

In May, workers at Rite-Aid's Southwest Distribution
Center in Lancaster, California successfully organized
under leadership from the Longshoremen's union (ILWU).
Over 500 workers became union members with a remarkable
contract for these times, ensuring annual wage increases
for the three-year deal. Rite Aid engaged in classic
union-busting strategies, including asking for a long
delay before the union election to give them more time
to intimidate workers, a tactic recently banned by
Obama's NLRB. It took Rite Aid workers five years to get
Rite Aid to sign a union contract, but it was a huge
victory after a long and costly struggle.

5. The IWW Returns, Organizing Food Chains

The Industrial Workers of the World has seen its recent
renaissance expand as it organizes restaurant chain
workers. The IWW was famous for its radical unionism in
the early 20th century, organizing workers the American
Federation of Labor would not: women, immigrants,
industrial labor, African Americans, and children. It
was crushed during World War I and for most of the 20th
century barely survived. But in recent years, the IWW
has had successes at Starbucks, and has also pursued
unionization of the sandwich chain Jimmy John's.
Although the IWW narrowly lost a recent election to
unionize Minneapolis Jimmy John's workers, the NLRB
threw out the election results after finding intense
corporate intimidation of workers.

6. Turning Up the Heat on Hyatt

Even where workers have not yet won their union battles,
they have received positive publicity. Hyatt hotels,
owned in part by Penny Pritzker, a close friend of
President Obama, turned heat lamps on striking workers
during the summer's worst heat wave. This act of
corporate malevolence from the nation's most stridently
anti-union hotel chain gained national sympathy for
their workers, in a struggle for improved working
conditions for housekeepers that has mostly operated
under the radar.

7. Even in Failure, Positives

One doesn't want to focus on losses, but even in recent
defeats there are snippets of hope. Honeywell locked out
workers at its Illinois uranium processing plant in
order to keep out the union. After over a year, the
company came to terms with its workers. It's true that
the new contract forced workers to accept many
concessions and that Honeywell forced the issue by
convincing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to allow
scab workers to work in the nuclear industry for the
first time. At the same time, the contract actually
increased job numbers at the plant. Moreover, the strike
gained international attention, with German and Belgian
unions inviting locked-out workers to Europe to speak of
Honeywell's draconian tactics. In the age of
globalization, this sort of international support can
have great meaning in putting transnational pressure on
mobile corporations.

8. The Verizon Strike

On Sunday, the Communication Workers of America and
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers called a
strike against Verizon. The phone company has demanded
radical cuts to workers' benefits and refuses to
negotiate. With the call for 45,000 workers to go out,
this is the largest strike in the country in several
years. A success here could serve as a firewall in the
corporate war on workers.

The strike has turned nasty already, with workers
claiming three injuries, including one woman knocked
unconscious, after bosses sped past picket lines in
their cars. These workers are in the traditional
landline phone operations, but CWA and IBEW are hoping
to use this as a springboard to organize other parts of
the Verizon empire.

With all of this pretty good to great news all of a
sudden, one wonders, is this coincidence? Or is it a
sign of a rejuvenated labor movement ready to take on
aggressive corporate attempts to destroy worker
organizations in order to promote an increased profit
line? It's important not to overstate the impact of the
labor-led protests in Madison against Scott Walker's
anti-union bill. Lowell Peterson noted, "What we
witnessed in Wisconsin was very inspiring but the voting
at nonfiction basic cable production companies was
mostly done before the Wisconsin gov started slinging
his six-gun. Organizing requires hard, patient work, and
folks have to believe the union can make a difference in
their lives. I think we have made that case to folks."

That's absolutely true, but at the same time the climate
of unionization is important. Workers have historically
joined unions when the media reports positively about
them and when the government plays a neutral role in
union elections rather than openly supporting employers.
The Republican overreach in Wisconsin, Ohio and other
traditionally pro-union states led to a great deal of
attention for unions. Obama's NLRB is making a real
difference in working people's lives.

But while these factors are important, the real credit
goes to the people bravely risking their jobs to improve
their lot and that of all workers. Workers may have
tough employment prospects if they lose their jobs
through union organizing, but the increasingly desperate
economy has also helped many understand that employers
will not take care of them and that their best chance
for a respectable paycheck lies in uniting with their
fellow employees. We must work to build off these recent
victories to make the labor movement a force in America
again. The survival of middle-class America depends on
it.

Erik Loomis is a professor of labor and environmental
history and a blogger at Lawyers, Guns and Money.



NLRB order will lead to re-run of large Kaiser election
in California

August 10, 2011

National labor Relations Board

http://www.nlrb.gov/news/nlrb-order-will-lead-re-run-large-kaiser-election-california

The National Labor Relations Board has issued an order
that will lead to a re-run of an election held in the
fall of 2010 among about 43,000 employees of Kaiser
Permanente in California. The employees voted on whether
to remain represented by their current union or to
select a different union or no representation. View the
order here.

Last month, Administrative Law Judge Lana Parke issued a
report following a hearing on objections to the election
filed by the union that lost the election.  The
objections alleged improper election conduct. Judge
Parke sustained some allegations and rejected others,
and recommended that the results of the original
election be set aside and a new election held.

Voters in the original election, which was the largest
mail ballot election in the Agency's history, favored
the incumbent union, United Healthcare Workers (UHW),
part of SEIU. The election was sought by the National
Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW), a union created by
former leaders of the UHW.

UHW/SEIU and Kaiser filed a joint motion with the Board
agreeing to the new election, but NUHW opposed the
request. Today's order, by Chairman Wilma B. Liebman and
Members Brian Hayes and Mark Gaston Pearce, with Member
Craig Becker recused, grants the joint motion, remanding
the case to the Oakland region for appropriate action,
including the scheduling of a new election.

Moderators Note:  To download the actual order, go to
the NLRB website listed above.



National labor board orders rerun of Kaiser election

National Union of Healthcare Workers

http://www.nuhw.org/


National Labor Relations Board orders rerun of election
for 43,500 Kaiser workers

This week, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)
ordered a rerun of last fall's union representation
election for 43,500 Kaiser workers. The board's order
follows a July decision by an Administrative Law Judge
finding that SEIU had committed multiple violations of
workers' rights.

Judge Lana Parke ruled in July that last fall's election
in Kaiser's Service and Tech unit was marred by SEIU's
threats that Kaiser workers would lose promised wages
and benefits if they voted to leave SEIU and join NUHW.

On Wednesday, the full labor board in Washington D.C.
authorized the NLRB's Oakland office to schedule a new
election. NUHW has demanded that the labor board hold
Kaiser accountable for colluding with SEIU's illegal
campaign and take corrective action to protect workers'
rights before a re-run takes place.

"SEIU and Kaiser continue to break the law and lie to
workers." said Sal Rosselli, President of NUHW, "Kaiser
workers cannot have a fair election until these illegal
threats are stopped and remedied."

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