Dusting off Old Union-Busting Tools

Under the pressure of a court order, public school teachers in Detroit voted on Sept. 13 to end a strike that began on Aug. 28. Had the teachers insisted on continuing their strike, they would have been fined a day’s pay for every day they didn’t work.

With their most effective weapon — the right to strike — taken away from them, the leaders of the Detroit Federation of Teachers reluctantly asked the Union’s 7,000 members to accept an estimated $60 million in contractual concessions.

The tentative contract includes an across-the-board pay freeze for this year, followed by increases of 1 percent and 2.5 percent in the remaining two years. That will mean a cut in real wages by 10 percent after inflation is taken into account. In addition, all teachers will be required to pay 10 percent of their health care expenses.

Commonplace Practices

UFCW members, especially in Southern California, are acquainted with concessionary demands by their employers. Nevertheless, we still have the right to strike. As a result, we are able to negotiate stronger contracts than would have been possible if we were left defenseless and asking for mercy.

The events in Detroit are a disgrace. Unfortunately, such things have become commonplace in today’s America, where employers in the private and public sectors are increasingly willing to dust off the union-busting tools of days gone by.

A study by the University of Illinois reveals the shocking extent of anti-Union practices by employers: 30 percent of them fire prounion workers; 91 percent force their employees to attend one-on-one anti-Union meetings with their supervisors; 51 percent use bribes or special favors to coerce workers into opposing Unions; 49 percent threaten to close a worksite when workers try to form a Union; and 82 percent of employers hire Union-busting consultants to fight organizing drives. The findings were analyzed by American Rights at Work, which determined that a worker is fired or penalized for supporting a Union every 23 minutes.

Priorities out of Whack

With an anti-Union president and an anti-Union Congress running the country, corporate bosses have become increasingly brazen, confident that the toothless National Labor Relations Board — stacked with anti-Union commissioners appointed by the President — will do little or nothing to defend the legal rights of workers.

Laws like the Wagner Act, which created the NLRB, were intended to protect workers against abusive injunctions by judges and threats by employers. Somewhere along the line the priorities of this nation went out of whack and laws that were meant to defend us have become useless or worse.

We need to change course and restore our priorities.