Why Won’t Workers Join Unions? 40,000 joined the CWA in recent months!

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2006/09/04/why-won%e2%80%99t-workers-join-unions/

Why Won’t Workers Join Unions?

Those of us in the union movement hear this a lot: “If workers really wanted to join unions, they would.”

But at Cingular Wireless operations nationwide, 40,000 workers have joined the Communications Workers of America (CWA) in recent months—18,000 in just the past 12 months—because Cingular respects workers’ rights to make up their own minds about unions without threats and intimidation from the employer.

It’s not because the technicians and call-center workers at Cingular are any different from most U.S. employees. In fact, some 57 million working people say they would join a union if they had a chance, according to a survey from Peter D. Hart Research Associates.

So why don’t more workers join unions?

The answer lies in the nation’s outmoded labor laws. U.S. labor laws, passed in the 1930s, sound on the face of it like a democratic process: They are set up so workers at a jobsite vote in secret ballot elections to determine if there’s enough support to join a union.

But the reality is more complex. The so-called election process (run by the National Labor Relations Board, NLRB) enables employers to routinely harass, intimidate and coerce workers who try to exercise their freedom to form a union at work. By the time they vote in NLRB elections on whether to join a union, many employees have been forced to sit in captive audience meetings where employers paint a picture of unions so evil, they defy even the worst stereotype. The lengthy NLRB election process gives employers lots of time to harass workers—who receive veiled threats of demotion or lousy job assignments or are badgered by supervisors who even are followed to the restroom by their supervisors. Studies by Cornell University Prof. Kate Bronfenbrenner show 78 percent of private-sector employers require supervisors deliver anti-union messages to workers they oversee.

And in many cases, when workers cast their ballots, they fear if they vote in favor of joining a union, they will lose their jobs. It’s illegal, but 25 percent of private-sector employers fire workers who try to form a union. And many more threaten workers with closings, layoffs and outsourcing.

In 2001, when Delta flight attendants began to form a union with the Flight Attendants, the company launched a vicious anti-worker campaign that included renting out movie theaters to hold mandatory meetings full of propaganda against the union. Supervisors intimidated attendants and even wrote people up for talking about the union (which is illegal). Delta sent letters and videos from senior management to the homes of flight attendants implicitly threatening job loss if they formed a union. Management even went so far as to tell the more than 3,000 flight attendants laid off after the Sept. 11, 2001, tragedy they couldn’t vote—when, in fact, they could. Delta flight attendants were not able to overcome these tactics and lost their union election.

So when they were thinking about joining a union, Cingular employees decided to hold what’s called a majority verification process, also known as card-check recognition. Workers who want to have a union sign a card authorizing the union to represent them. If 51 percent of the bargainnig unit wants a union, their employer must honor their choice and bargain with their union. No lengthy process during which employers have time to hassle workers. To further ameliorate employer intimidation, Cingular workers also negotiated a code of conduct with management in which Cingular agreed not to interfere in the process.

FULL article at link above.

[RagingInMiami]

1. The Cingular union sucks

My mom has worked at Cingular for years and tells me they're in bed with management.

[Omaha Steve]

4. Her general location?

My wife was CWA for 18 years. My sister had 30 and retired. They don't have any complaints about the CWA. My sister went through 3 strikes, we went through one that lasted 3 weeks. Our credit union is also CWA, and the workers there love it.

[RagingInMiami]

14. She's in Miami

So I'm not even sure if it's the CWA, but whatever union they have down here, it sucks.

A few years ago, they laid my mom off because she was a few years away from retirement and would have been entitled to all sorts of benefits. So she begged and pleaded and finally got her job back - at a 50 percent salary cut. She took it.

[ninkasi]

19. I was with the CWA for 25 years

I'm now a retired member. I can tell you that some of the ones in my office who tried to suck up to management, and refused to join the union were the first ones to come running to us when management screwed them over.

This was Texas, and you didn't have to join the union if you didn't want to. Some of the union members didn't see why we had to help the non-union members in grievance meetings, but it was essential. We were fighting against letting the company establish a precedent for behaving the same way in the future, regarding whatever issue was being disputed.

We were on strike when hurricane Alicia hit, but installers and repairmen went back to work to restore phone lines to places like hospitals, because it was for the public good. We need to get more workers unionized, too. With globalization, maybe we should think of uniting workers on a world wide basis.

Impossible now, I know, but if the powerful corporations continue to exploit workers by outsourcing, and moving factories, and call centers, to the cheapest country, it may be one of the only ways to survive. They divide us by making us compete for the same jobs, and they get richer and richer by paying themselves the money they save by screwing us.

[mitchtv]

22. I had the same experience in CWA

with the "Dues equivalents"(Non Members).Lots of people complain about CWA, mainly cause it is mainstream. but after tranferring to a TIU unit. I learned, Big is beautiful..The sad thing is that the union spends an enormous part of their resources trying to save the jobs of prople who deserve to be fired, and the rank and file don't realize that the Union MUST defend everyone who pays dues.

[acmavm]

2. You're right about the stereotype thing. People forget what it took to

progress beyond the days of the packing plants and the coal mines that Upton Sinclair wrote about.

The biggest stereotype is the Hoffa/mafia crap. And the Jake Yablonski murders. It's really funny but the couple of times I was stupid enough to get into a conversation with anyone regarding unions, that crap came up immediately. But then again, I wasn't arguing with the brightest bulbs in the pack either.

[GOPBasher]

3. I just saw an add today that viciously denounced unions.

I don't know what the hell they were advertising, or who the hell was behind it; but it was obvious corporate fat-cat propaganda aimed at diminishing the public's opinion of unions. It was a bunch of bullshit.

If people don't like unions, they should abandon their 40-hr workweek, weekends off, paid vacation time, all benefits, all workers compensation they may get, and they shouldn't be protected by the labor laws that unions worked so hard implement.

Pigs. :puke:

[Union Thug]

7. I kind of like that... Hate Unions? Then forfeit everything they have done

for the workers of this country (and the world).

Problem is, the repukes (and even Clinton to some degree), have been systematically dismantling labor gains since Raygun. Soon, there won't be much left to forfeit anyway.

[Omaha Steve]

9. UnionFacts.com launched an attack on unionized American workers

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-mcentee/the-real-union-facts_b_28533.html

By Gerald McEntee (my International Union's President)

In February, a group called UnionFacts.com launched an attack on unionized American workers and their elected union leadership. So far, they haven't made much of a splash. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that a good deal of their website traffic is from union staffers and members checking out the hysterically and willfully inaccurate claims the site makes.

UnionFacts.com is a sham group, reportedly financed by the Chamber of Commerce and run by a Rick Berman, a corporate shill who once urged pregnant women to consume more tuna despite toxic levels of mercury.

Why talk about them? Because Berman's latest broadside against public service employees is an insult not only to the decent men and women who make our communities run, but a threat to our very public health and safety.

In dishonest ads appearing in several states recently, Berman makes the charge that many public employees "work under conditions that most private-sector taxpayers would envy." As evidence, he sites the fact that Oregon public employees, for example, earn "8 hours of sick leave per month," "nine paid holidays," and "benefit dollars to spend on medical and dental insurance.

Oh, the humanity! Vacation time for 9-1-1 dispatchers??? Sick days for the folks who keep our water supplies clean and safe from terror attacks??? Health insurance for cops and firefighters???

In Berman's book, this is somehow exorbitant. And he's hoping that non-unionized workers will be so consumed with outrage that they'll lobby lawmakers to reduce compensation for public service employees instead of fighting for these same benefits themselves.

Mr. Berman obviously forgets what most Americans know: union wages and benefits have always set the standard for what's fair, even for non-union workers. And its unions, after all, that have been central in building America's middle class. Cutting them means, as Jordan Barab put it at Confined Space, a "race to the bottom" when it comes to compensation for all hardworking Americans.

And while we're at it, why doesn't Mr. Berman disclose his salary, vacation days and health benefits as chair of his own Berman & Co. public relations firm. I'm betting Berman's bloodlust for benefit cuts is pretty much non-existent when it comes to his own self interest.

We should all realize that this isn't just about attacking public employees, but our very public health and safety. Mr. Berman carefully chose to run his ridiculous ads in states where voters are considering so-called "Taxpayer Bill of Rights," or TABOR, measures.

TABOR is Grover Norquist's latest attempt to fulfill his promise to cut government "down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub" by starving public services of tax dollars. TABOR puts mandatory draconian caps on public spending, making it nearly impossible to meet health and safety needs.

The measure has had a disastrous effect in Colorado, where TABOR has stifled spending on highways and programs for the elderly. And the percentage of uninsured children has nearly doubled. That's why voters suspended it when they finally had their say on the measure in 2005; the Wisconsin legislature rejected it just this year.

But the right wing brigade marches on, trying to institute TABOR in other states. And working Americans are fighting to stop them. So is it any wonder why Mr. Berman is going after public employees?

Here are the real union facts: Mr. Berman's attacks on public employees only serve to weaken our public health and safety. We won't let him do it.

[GOPBasher]

12. Yes, that's the one!

Man, I'd love to get those assholes in a public debate. They can run their mouths on a damn commercial, because no one is there to state the other side of the argument.

[Union Thug]

5. Thx for posting...

One thing that the Raygun administration did well is exploit ignorance and fear, and many people have formed opinions of unions based on Raygun era propaganda.

Secondly, the NLRB works in the interest of business. I remember my father's age discrimination issue - one that should have been clear cut ("this is a younger work place and you don't fit in") was tossed by those anti-worker pigs.

Thx again for the post...

[Greyhound]

31. I effectively lost my second career over trying to help the employees

that worked under me, by taking their case before the NLRB. I was fired and they refused to enforce the law, so everybody lost, except of course, for the management. This was under the Clinton administration, I'm sure it's much worse now.

[NOLADEM]

6. Simple

1. Unions are very weak due to Republican administrations' attacks on the mechanisms that make Unions work.

2. Dues. People can't afford food and gas right now. Dues are just not there for most folks. Especially when the Unions cannot point to many recent successes that make the Dues an acceptable investment.

3. Image. The Repukes have done a good job of defaming the Unions, and corrupt Union heads have done nothing to help their own image. Electing Jimmy Hoffa's son the head the biggest US union is bad for its image, no matter what the facts are.

4. Outsourcing. Unions 'push' jobs offshore by demanding decent wages and conditions. Many people would rather have what they have than nothing.

[Union Thug]

16. good points for consideration - not so sure about the framing

You make some interesting points. What it all comes down to, I think, is framing and propaganda wars (wars which I am the first to admit the unions have not fared so well in).

<2. Dues...>

This argument has never made sense to me. People don't like paying dues, but they are perfectly willing to pay the difference between lower wages, fewer benefits and a diminishing quality of life. Again, the argument should be re-framed. Geez, I've paid between 12 and 35 dollars per month for dues. These numbers are far less than what I have had to pay for health and dental for my family in non-union jobs - not to mention the feeling of empowerment in the workplace.

<3. Image. The Repukes have done a good job of defaming the Unions, and corrupt Union heads have done nothing to help their own image. Electing Jimmy Hoffa's son the head the biggest US union is bad for its image, no matter what the facts are.>

As you say, it's an image thing - much of which was exploited by the business class. It is simply another load of propaganda to add to the heap - corporate corruption was statistically more prevalent that union corruption, but no one hears much about that in the post Raygun days of CEO worship.

<4. Outsourcing. Unions 'push' jobs offshore by demanding decent wages and conditions. Many people would rather have what they have than nothing.>

Again, more anti-labor bias in the language. The answer is buried in the statement. Business hates having to pay decent wages. The first motive for off-shoring is corporate greed, not concern for the consumer prices. NAFTA laws and the goal of exploiting the weakest and cheapest is what drives jobs offshore.

[Greyhound]

24. So what have the unions done about this for the last 30+ years?

Each of the points remains valid and your response addresses none of them. How do the unions expect to survive when they have nothing to point to as a benefit that the average dumb-ass can understand?

It seems to me that, once again, it comes back to class. The unions are run by the same type of executive that runs the company. Hoffa is a great example. How can you effectively represent truck drivers when you've never driven a truck for a living, or represent tech workers when you have no clue what it is they actually do? The potential members see this crap and think "why should I support that asshole's lifestyle with my hard earned dollars, none of which they put in my pocket?"

Don't get me wrong, I love the idea and the former practice of, unionism. It's just that the guys (BTW where are the women union bosses?) that run them do so primarily for their own benefit.


Check out reply #18 (FloridaPat) for another example of why the unions, as they are, are often worse than useless.

[Omaha Steve]

25. start here

"Don't get me wrong, I love the idea and the former practice of, unionism. It's just that the guys (BTW where are the women union bosses?) that run them do so primarily for their own benefit."

http://www.aflcio.org/aboutus/heartofthemovement/hom_paula_dorsey.cfm

Paula Dorsey, AFSCME Local 426 Milwaukee

Paula Dorsey has spent most of her adult life fighting for workers. After serving 19 years as president of AFSCME Local 426 in Milwaukee, Dorsey became a staff representative for the local about two years ago. Under the union’s contract with the city, she is released full-time from her city job to work for the union, handling employees’ grievances.


“I do it because I enjoy it. I enjoy helping people,” she says. Dorsey says she enjoys negotiating good union contracts for workers because she knows that means their families will be able to afford to live a good life. “Unions are an important avenue to protect the rights of working people and to build communities.”



Last year she served on the union committee that negotiated a new three-year contract for Milwaukee city workers. It was a hard negotiation, she says, because the city changed mayors and labor negotiators during the talks. But eventually, the workers stood together and won a good pact.

Dorsey says the contract talks pointed up one of the toughest problem facing workers today: Apathy. “We have to get people to understand that they are the union and they have the responsibility to protect our good jobs. They need to look at what’ s going on in the politics and how that affects your budget and your community.”

It’s particularly important for working people to get involved in their local government’s budget process, Dorsey says. “We pay taxes and we need to see where that money is going. We need to show up at budget hearings and make sure that they get the facts about what’s going on from the people who are doing the jobs our taxes pay for.”

Dorsey, who describes herself as “50-plus, single with no kids,” says the union is her family as well as her life’s work. “I never wanted to do anything else,” she says.

[Greyhound]

28. That's great and I hope she is a good one.

The fact remains that <8% of union executives are women, and if you remove the represented unions that are nearly exclusively made up of women, that drops to <2%.

This is akin to the re:puke:s pointing to Rice and Alvarez to show their inclusiveness.

All I'm saying is that there are perfectly valid complaints about how and who runs the unions. Paula Dorsey is a wonderful example of who should be running them, but she is not representative of the big picture. In addition, the AFL-CIO is one of, if not the, best unions we have. Check out this resume;

http://demopedia.democraticunderground.com/index.php/James_P._Hoffa,_Jr.

[Omaha Steve]

29. MORE on women that run unions!

Please note these local Presidents ALL come from the unit as laborers before moving up.

http://www.aflcio.org/aboutus/heartofthemovement/hom_linda_dickey.cfm

Linda Dickey: ‘I Take My Oath Seriously’

At the local union hall of Glass, Molders, Pottery, Plastics and Allied Workers (GMP) Local 419, in East Liverpool on the Ohio-West Virginia border, workers still have a copy of a contract the local negotiated nearly 40 years ago with Homer Laughlin China, manufacturer of the internationally famous Fiesta Dinnerware. Linda Dickey remembers the first time she saw the contract.

"I believe it's from1968, several years before I started there, and it actually read that there were different wages for men and women," she recalls. "When I saw this in print, I thought, 'Holy cow, how far we have come.'"

Today, as president of the local, Dickey sometimes shows the contract to younger members "so they can see how much things have changed with the union and what the union has done for us."



In her job as a finisher at the plant, Dickey inspects flatware for flaws before passing it into a finishing machine. But as a union activist, she does what activists in local unions do everywhere: negotiates contracts, represents her members when they have grievances, pays close attention to politics and shares what she knows about candidates with her union sisters and brothers. If you're involved at all in the labor movement in West Virginia—or if you're Sen. Robert Byrd or Sen. Jay Rockefeller or Gov. Joe Manchin—you know Linda Dickey. She's been a Local 419 member for the 32 years she's worked for Laughlin, and still remembers what it was like to hold a nonunion job.

"I worked at a nonunion grocery store when I was 21 and I saw so many things were happening that shouldn't happen. I saw plenty of times when they came up to someone and said, 'We'll lay you off—we don't need you anymore.' In the union, we have seniority. They can't come up to me tomorrow and say that." In fact, says Dickey, when she began working with union people, she saw they weren't afraid to speak up and thought: 'Wow, this is for me!'"

"Everything's not perfect in this world," Dickey observes. "But when you're in the union, you do have a voice and you're not afraid to speak up."

Dickey is proud of a contract she helped negotiate eight years ago, and also takes pride in facilitating a complicated grievance that took nine months to settle—and resulted in some 29 members receiving $32,000 in back pay. And she’s proud of the GMP itself, which she says is "like a big family that comes together at the conventions—sometimes we'll have our differences, but we don't hold grudges, we move on, and we work hard for one another."

But she's proudest of being elected vice-president of the West Virginia AFL-CIO in 2001. "That was one time I cried because I was so happy," she says. "You can do so much good in that job."

Dickey also was elected president of the Brooke-Hancock AFL-CIO Labor Council, and she's a member of the advisory board of the Institute of Labor Studies at West Virginia University. A strong advocate of labor education, Dickey says the Institute "is precious for unions in West Virginia. There aren't many states that still have this. They taught me the law. They taught me what I can and can’t do."

Why is she so involved in the union movement? "You get this in your blood somehow," she says. "I enjoy helping people. I feel I do a good job. I take my oath seriously. I try to represent the members as best I can."


Fran Ehret: Improving Job Safety for New Jersey’s Turnpike Employees

"Toll collecting on the New Jersey Turnpike—it’s like an assembly line that yells at you. People wait their turn for the teller at a bank and they don’t get abusive to the teller. But when they wait in line at a tollboth, they berate the toll collector. That makes it very stressful."

Fran Ehret speaks from experience. She’s worked for years as a toll collector on the New Jersey Turnpike. Now, as the president of the New Jersey Turnpike Employees Union-International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers Local 194, she represents some 1,500 toll collectors, maintenance workers and clerical and technical employees.

Toll collectors also contend with serious safety problems. "There’s a new federal study that said toll plazas are the most dangerous places on the highways," Ehret notes. Often, workers have to cross E-Z Pass lanes—in which cars don’t stop—to get to their booths. "Once you get in the toll booths, windows get busted and there’s damage from truck and bus mirrors because there is only about six inches clearance on either side. You feel like you’re in a war zone."



There’s not much anyone can do about ill-tempered drivers. But Local 194 leaders have been pressing hard and winning some victories to make the job less dangerous, including rumble strips and ‘Your Speed Is’ signs at some toll plazas.

What’s more, Ehret says, the Local 194 members have won a solid middle-class life through their union. "We’ve been very successful in contract negotiations," she notes, including getting lifetime health benefits and prescription coverage for workers as well as negotiating improvements in working conditions. She adds, "We’ve learned to deal on a level playing field with management without too much fighting. There’ll always be disagreements with management, but that’s pretty important for labor relations to have that dialogue and respect."

Ehret grew up in a union family: her father was an organizer with the IFPTE and her mother was a member of their Local 66. "My parents were activists when I was growing up. I remember going out to California with the grape pickers. I remember meeting César Chávez."

Ehret became secretary-treasurer of her local in 1999 and was elected president in 2001. "Over the last five years, I’ve earned the respect of my peers. The first time I ran for president, the fact that I’m a woman definitely affected how some people voted, but we’re past that now. I’ve been reelected two terms without any opposition."

Every local has its own culture and history. In part because members work at a state agency, one of Local 194’s biggest activities involves political action, including phone-banking and door-to-door get-out-the-vote outreach to union members. Often, when Ehret and other local officers visit members in the field, "we’re discussing politics and the issues of the day, keeping them in touch if we need to get together on something."

At a time when workers and their unions have been under attack, Ehret says Local 194 is "very hands-on and in touch with our members. This union has done a tremendous job over the last 40 years for the workers here."

[Greyhound]

30. Another good profile. I take it you're not going to address any of the

issues raised? The primary issue being that the unions, by and large, reflect the same (executive) classist system that management does.

Talking points only work on TV, they do not convince real people with real concerns.

[Omaha Steve]

32. I can only talk about the unions I have belonged to

I was in the GAU in the 80's. I've been AFSCME for almost nine. The GAU (now the GAIU) and AFSCME have trustees, stewards, and officers that worked up from the ranks. AFSCME's current President did the same. I met him in Oct. of 2004. He was part of the Kerry Edwards traveling campaign that went to all the swing states TOGETHER!

http://www.afscme.org/about/740.cfm



President Gerald W. McEntee

Gerald W. McEntee is the International President of the 1.4 million-member American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), one of the most aggressive and politically active organizing unions in the AFL-CIO. Since 1998, nearly 250,000 public service workers have joined AFSCME through organizing campaigns. McEntee was first elected AFSCME President in 1981 and was re-elected in June 2004 to another four-year term.

As a Vice President of the AFL-CIO, a member of its Executive Council and chair of the Political Education Committee, McEntee is a key leader of the labor movement and its political program. Under McEntee's leadership, the federation created its highly successful and much imitated voter education campaigns, which helped increase the number of union household voters to a record 26 percent of the electorate in 2000 (up from 19 percent in 1992).

McEntee has long been a leader in the fight to reform the nation's health care system. President Clinton named McEntee to serve on the Presidential Advisory Commission on Quality and Consumer Protection in the Health Care Industry in 1997.

McEntee is a co-founder and chairman of the board of the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute, the preeminent voice for working Americans on the economy. He has led efforts to strengthen and improve such workplace standards as the minimum wage, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, and the Family and Medical Leave Act.

For his efforts to improve the lives of working families, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights presented McEntee with its prestigious Hubert H. Humphrey Award in 2004.

Before assuming the presidency of AFSCME, McEntee began his distinguished career as a labor leader in Pennsylvania in 1958. As a union organizer in Philadelphia, he led the drive to unionize more than 75,000 Pennsylvania public service employees, which at that time was the largest union mobilization in history. He was elected Executive Director at the founding convention of AFSCME Council 13 in Pennsylvania in 1973 and an International Vice President of AFSCME in 1974.

McEntee holds a bachelor's degree in economics from LaSalle University in Philadelphia. A native of Philadelphia, McEntee and his wife Barbara live in Washington, D.C.

The rest of the officers bio's are here: http://www.afscme.org/about/1716.cfm

[Greyhound]

33. OK. n/t

[Doremus]

34. I'm hoping others will come forward and share their first-hand knowledge

As for me, my DH and most of his family have been proud members of the Ironworkers union for 3 generations.

I can't speak to national leadership (as I simply don't know how it's elected or organized), but our union locals all over the country are governed by fellow Ironworkers who run for President, Business Manager or whichever leadership position they're interested in. They are full journeymen who in most instances have been on the job for many years before becoming involved in the administration of union business.

Not all unions are corrupt, nor are they all run by career suits. It's a shame so many buy into that fallacy, but with a near-constant Republicaca smear campaign I guess it isn't surprising.

[Greyhound]

36. I'm very glad to hear this. All of my personal experience has been in

the west where unions are rare and generally ineffective, so my view of them is skewed.

[Solo_in_MD]

8. If card check is enough to certify, it will be enough to decertify

The unions should be careful when trying to eliminate certification elections.

[Gman]

13. Absolutely not true

You have to have an election to decertify. You don't have an election with a card check agreement.

[Solo_in_MD]

15. What we have been hearing is that the repukes will codify that

You are quite correct about that TODAY. Currently the employer can accept card check or force an election, and in thoery so could a union for decertification. If the current drive to force employers to accept card check looks like it is going to win, expect a rider that mandates that unions will have to accept a card check for decertification. All done in the name of *fairness*

[Gman]

17. That danger has always been there

even long before the notion of card check. It was there in the 80's with Reagan, and of course, now. Although there is probably a much greater danger of this happening now than in the 80's.

[Gman]

10. Ed Whitacre, CEO of the now AT&T, can take full credit

for the good union climate at Cingular. Quite a few years ago Cingular signed a neutrality agreement with CWA. That agreement said that if CWA got a majority of employees to sign cards requesting a certification election, the company would automatically recognize the union. In the beginning, Cingular management ignored and circumvented the agreement. But about three years later, the agreement was renegotiated and management was told they will stick by the terms of the agreement. Since then the ranks of CWA Cingular members has grown.

Whitacre was an old labor relations manager that had a very good relationship with CWA from back in the 1970's in the old Bell System. He was fair and as a result respected by the CWA. Many in CWA were very happy to hear he would become CEO of the then SW Bell Corporation and Whitacre has yet to disappoint anyone in the CWA. After the neutrality agreement was signed, Whitacre wsa invited and addressed the CWA convention. Something at the time was unheard of.

Whitacre can also take credit for personally intervening in several contract negotiations with the telephone company part of SBC to assure a fair contract. During the last company negotiations CWA had a four-day strike against SBC primarily over benefits. A CWA staff rep told me the contract on the table before the strike and the one after the strike were two completely different things. No one was really sure what happened and the concensus became that President Morton Bahr and Whitacre had likely met and decided to resolve the issues. As a side note, whereas CWA AT&T members pay no premiums for their health care, management employees pay upwards of $300 per month. This validates what I have said for many years that the company does to management due to their exempt status what they are unable to do to the union.

Being union-friendly is the culture at AT&T and Cingular. It's what things really could be like everywhere.

[napi21]

11. Corp attitudes like this have existed for YEARS!

Back in the early 70's when I worked for a very large heath food chain's home office, there were rumblings about joining a union. You'd have thought that someone had threatened that Co. with an attack or a bomb! Management was pacing the floor, peering through the blinds at the union reps below on the sidewalk, and huddeling in closed door meetings asking each other "What in the world are we going to do if the employees join a UNION!"

Things are different now, in that the co's aren't afraid of unions anymore, they just threated the employees with layoffs or firing them, and the employees cower in the corner because they can't afford to loose their job!

[FloridaPat]

18. I was in a union once. Being female, I got real tired of the "Brotherhood"

When we went on strike, the scabs were called "weak sisters". We also had very little backing from other unions and everyone crossed our picket lines. We had a vote on something once. 40% voted against it and the rest voted for it. Seems the union rules were that they could declare all the votes go to yea or nay if they wanted to. So the protest of the situation was never seen. Our tally was 100% for the vote. We that went on strike lost our jobs. We could have gotten unemployment insurance, but the AFL-CIO wanted to prove the case in court. They didn't tell us that if we got any other job and got laid off, we could get our unemployment.

I for one don't want to be in an union again. I paid good money for pretty much nothing but bad advice. and a ruined career.

[Omaha Steve]

26. The NLRB is also for complaints from members about bad unions

Even freedom on information requests can not get into files of complaints from employees against UNIONS!

http://www.nlrb.gov/nlrb/shared_files/brochures/engulp.asp

The National Labor Relations Board
and YOU
Unfair Labor Practices

Prepared by the National Labor Relations Board
an agency of the United States Government

This pamphlet contains a general explanation of what the National Labor Relations Board is and what it does with respect to the processing of unfair labor practice charges. Although the pamphlet cannot provide answers to all questions, it does contain useful information which will be helpful to you.


Examples of Union Conduct Which Violate the NLRA Are:

* Threats to employees that they will lose their jobs unless they support the union's activities.

* Refusing to process a grievance because an employee has criticized union officers.

* Fining employees who have validly resigned from the union for engaging in protected activity following their resignation.

* Seeking the discharge of an employee for not complying with a union shop agreement, when the employee has paid or offered to pay a lawful initiation fee and periodic dues.

* Refusing referral or giving preference in a hiring hall on the basis of race or union activities.

These are just a sample. A bad union (and they do exist, especially on the local level) should be charged and fined. Look up a few cases if you like.

[FILAM23]

20. I wish that everyone had

the chance to join a union if desired. However in my view closed shop
laws that require joining a union violate my right to life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness.. Having joined a union once (closed shop) I would
personnally live in a cardboard box under a bridge before I would ever
again pay union dues.

[Union Thug]

21. Majority rule. If the workers vote closed shop, closed it is.

If others don't agree they are free to go work somewhere else. Why should anyone enjoy union pay and benefits if they are not willing to contribute to the union that negotiates for them?

Unions are the only place that democracy makes it into the workplace; closed shops are the product of grassroots democracy in action.

[FILAM23]

35. I know how they work and closed shop

laws are why I didn't move back to Michigan when I retired from the military.
Even if a shop has a union if I want to work there and negotiate my own
wage and benefit package I should have that right.

[Omaha Steve]

37. That is against the NLRB law and here is why....

The contract covers every classification in the bargaining unit, right to work state or not. If an employer wants to weaken a union, giving BETTER pay and benefits to non union members will do it. The law keeps them from saying, the union says this is all your worth. We think you DESERVE more. See my point? And once the union and contract are gone, guess what usually happens to everybody in the shop.

[senseandsensibility]

23. Go union.

I'm glad to hear some good news regarding unions. I know I won't hear any on the corporate news networkd.

[PresidentWar]

27. Corruption....top down politics.....

You've heard these complaints before. I am an unabashed union advocate, but we desperately need to purge them of all the mob influence and graft.

THEN you might see a huge migration toward them.