Need Another Reason to Support Employee Free Choice? Read About Rite Aid

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2007/06/19/need-another-reason-to-support-employee-free-choice-read-about-rite-aid/

Need Another Reason to Support Employee Free Choice? Read About Rite Aid



ILWU Organizing Department Communications Specialist Marcy Rein describes efforts by workers at a Rite Aid warehouse in California to form a union in the face of employer intimidation and harassment.

Nacho Meza walked in to his job June 8 at the Rite Aid distribution center in Lancaster, Calif., to cheers and hugs from his co-workers. He had been out of work since Rite Aid fired him Jan. 30 for helping co-workers join the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). He and another union supporter, Debbie Fontaine, were rehired after the ILWU filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

Says Meza:

Rite Aid has fired a lot of people, but none of them have ever come back. People can see the difference it makes when the union supports us.

The return of Meza and Fontaine gave heart and hope to the union supporters, but they have a long way to go to undo the damage Rite Aid inflicted with nearly a year of anti-union campaigning. The way the nation’s third-largest drug store chain has played the system—trampling workers’ rights, then escaping with a wrist slap—shows up some of the worst flaws of the NLRB election system.

Meza will be in Washington, D.C., today for a rally on Capitol Hill in support of the Employee Free Choice Act. The bill (S. 1041), now in the Senate and up for a vote as early as tomorrow, would help ensure that workers such as Meza and Fontaine who seek a union are not subject to the type of employer harassment and intimidation now common under current labor laws. (Take a minute and urge your senators to vote for the Employee Free Choice Act here.)

More than 600 people work at the Lancaster warehouse, the distribution hub for Rite Aid’s largest market. A group of them first approached the ILWU in March 2006. They were tired of working “at will” (employer-speak for being fired at any time) and of the mandatory overtime piled on to their already 10-hour days. They were sick of punishing production standards and of freezing in the winter and frying in the summer because the warehouse lacked adequate climate control.

“More than anything, we wanted them to respect us as workers,” Meza said.

FULL story at link.