By Mike Elk

"If the penalty for robbing a bank was you had to post a piece of paper saying you robbed a bank, we'd all be bank robbers!" a long-time union organizer once said to me.

Currently under U.S. labor law, the penalty for an employer that robs someone of their job for expressing their right to join a union is just that. They have to post a piece of paper saying they illegally fired an employee from their job. As a result, nearly, one in five workers are fired from their jobs during the lead up to an NLRB union certification election.

If you ever wondered why union members refer to themselves as "brothers and sisters" during union rallies, it's because of the bond of solidarity that is formed during the intense harassment and firing of workers leading up to union certification elections. Companies hire union busting or "union relations consultants" 82 percent of the time to run expensive, aggressive anti-union campaigns, costing typically in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. These union-busting firms are so effective that the biggest one, Labor Relations Institute, guarantees a defeat of a union-organizing drive or your money back.

Workers are forced to watch anti-union videos that imply starting a union will ruin their jobs, lower their wages, and erase their benefits. Employers threaten to close a factory 49 percent of the time if a union wins an election (a violation of federal law)—despite the fact that only 2 percent of the time does this actually occur if a union wins an election. Workers are called in for a one-on-one meeting with their direct supervisor 90 percent of the time, where they make it known that they will be denied a promotion, stripped of their health benefits or perhaps even fired if they are suspected of supporting a union. Then to make sure there aren't enough votes for the union, employers will just fire a large number of union organizers right before the election

As a result of such Gestapo-style, union-busting tactics, only about half the time that workers petition for a union certification election are they actually successful. I have seen cases where we have nearly two-thirds of workers sign union cards when they petition for an NLRB union certification only to lose the election in a landslide after a long intimidation campaign. Studies have shown that 60 percent of workers want to join a union if they were able to but only 8 percent of private sector employees are members of unions.

Today, Sen.Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., will introduce the Employee Free Choice Act, which would give workers an opportunity to form unions freely. The Employee Free Choice Act would allow a union to be certified once a majority of the members of a plant signed a petition or card saying they wanted to be recognized as a union. No several-month period would exist between the initial certification petition and the NLRB certification election as it currently exists, limiting the ability of employers to pick off union organizers. In addition, the Employee Free Choice Act puts serious teeth into U.S. labor law, fining employers $20,000 for each employee fired—a lot more than the cost of the piece of paper employers are currently required to post.

http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2009031110/give-me-union-not-wheelchair-case-efca

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