In this report:
The Empire Strikes Back: The Corporate Attack on the Right of Workers
Dr. Martin Luther King acknowledged the powerful, transformative role of unions in his 1961 remarks to the AFL-CIO. "History is a great teacher," Dr. King said. "Now everyone knows that the labor movement did not diminish the strength of the nation but enlarged it. By raising the living standards of millions, labor miraculously created a market for industry and lifted the whole nation to undreamed of levels of production. Those who attack labor forget these simple truths, but history remembers them."
Throughout the late 19th century and much of the 20th century, union representation and the union movement played an incalculable role in achieving workplace and societal policies and programs that changed bad jobs into good jobs, raised living standards, reduced inequality, and created a vibrant and growing American middle class. From leading the fight for such basic protections as the minimum wage, a 40-hour work week, overtime pay, and safe and healthy workplaces, to partnering with civil and human rights organizations to ban discrimination on and off the job and champion reforms like Social Security and Medicare, a growing labor movement dedicated its resources and strength in numbers to building a better America for all working families.
Unions were able to improve workplaces and build a better America because for many decades, public officials and even many corporate leaders, while perhaps not warmly embracing workplace representation, nevertheless accepted the role of collective bargaining in American life and tolerated—even respected—the right of workers to form unions. But that acceptance has evaporated, as labor historian John Logan noted last year "Over the past three decades, U.S. employers have waged what Business Week [in a 1994 article] has called 'one of the most successful anti-union wars ever' with spectacular results—private-sector union membership now stands at…its lowest level since the 1920s."
Today, employers' anti-union campaigns are typically so ruthless and so effective in achieving their desired results that the right to organize, a fundamental right that is also codified under U.S. and international law, has been virtually extinguished in America. According to reports by American Rights at Work and research by Dr. Kate Bronfenbrenner, Director of Labor Education Research at the School of Industrial Labor Relations at Cornell University and Professor Gordon Lafer of the University of Oregon's Labor Education and Research Center, when workers launch an organizing effort:
- One in four companies fires at least one pro-union worker;
- One of every 17 eligible voters in NLRB elections is terminated, suspended, demoted, or otherwise penalized economically for supporting unionization;
- Overwhelming majorities of companies hire anti-union consultants to squelch the organizing campaign (75 percent);
- One-third of companies (34 percent) use bribes and special favors to discourage union support;
- Half of companies (51 percent) threaten to shutter their operations if a union is formed;
- Virtually all companies (92 percent) require their employees to attend "captive audience" mass meetings, at which management preaches against the union; and
- More than three-quarters of companies (78 percent) require workers to participate in one-on-one anti-union meetings with their supervisors or other managers.
The fact that workers routinely encounter such hostility when trying to exercise their right to form unions is a travesty of justice. Compounding the tragedy is the fact that much of the conduct employers engage in to dissuade workers from organizing is entirely legal, or falls into a vast gray area that neither courts nor the labor board aggressively regulate. Thus, for example, employers can hold as many captive audience anti-union meetings as they want (until 24 hours before the election), during which they can present one-sided antiunion pitches; they can require employees to attend these meetings and terminate them for refusing to do so; they can ban union supporters from the meetings; and they can impose gag orders barring employees at the meetings from speaking in support of forming a union. Employers can also arrange regular one-on-one anti-union chats between workers and their immediate supervisors, while barring union organizers from the worksite and prohibiting employees from talking among themselves about forming a union except during non-work periods (i.e. at any time other than during breaks).
Employers also know—and are regularly reminded by their anti-union consultants—that delaying a final decision on union certification is one of the most powerful and predictably effective tactics for defeating an organizing effort. To that end, employers routinely exploit the NLRA's multiple avenues for delay, filing both pre-election challenges and post-election appeals. Though frequently frivolous, these delays are entirely lawful. But when employers do cross the line and engage in clearly illegal acts, workers and unions are often reluctant to file unfair labor practice (ULP) charges, because they do not want to contribute to further delays. For those workers whose unlawful treatment becomes the subject of an ULP, the wait for remedies is often unconscionable: the median time between the filing of an unfair labor practice charge and a decision by the NLRB was almost two years (659 days) in 2005.
Meanwhile, the basic remedies the law prescribes for unlawful employer behavior (back pay less interim earnings and slap-on-the-wrist cease-and-desist orders) are so minimal as to have no deterrent effect at all. Finally, even if workers persevere against all odds to form a union, continued employer recalcitrance in bargaining substantially reduces the odds of obtaining a collective bargaining agreement, the primary goal of most organizing drives. According to American Rights at Work, workers fail to secure a first contract within a year of union certification in one-third (34 percent) of all successful organizing campaigns.
In short, exercising their fundamental right to join together with their co-workers into unions and bargain collectively with their employers requires workers to run a relentless gauntlet of employer opposition, hostility, abuse and delay. As noted labor scholar and Berkeley Professor Harley Shaiken puts it, "Joining a union has become a risk rather than a right" for American workers.
The bludgeoning of workers' rights in America has been remarkably effective. While the percentage of non-managerial workers who want to belong to unions rose sharply from 44 percent in the mid-1990s to 58 percent today, the share of private sector workers in unions has fallen from 11.3 percent to only 7.6 percent (and the organized workforce overall has fallen from just under 15 percent of all workers to 12.4 percent last year). This decline in unionization has had devastating consequences. Real wages have been stagnant for most of the last 30 years. Income inequality has exploded. Health coverage is declining and costs are rising. Guaranteed pensions have all but disappeared. And because the power of working people has been so eroded, anti-worker politicians inordinately stall simple humane measures, like raising the minimum wage, or hold them hostage to tax breaks for the wealthiest or to other items on the corporate wish list. Efforts to expand and strengthen workplace protections and societal programs that will broadly benefit working families are stymied. And longstanding workplace guarantees, like overtime pay; progressive social programs, and unemployment insurance; and public policies designed to help disadvantaged workers achieve workplace equity, like affirmative action, come under blistering attack.
All workers suffer from the denial of the right to form unions and the corresponding decline in unionization. However, because women and racial minorities benefit disproportionately from union representation, the cost to them—in lost opportunities for greater economic security and genuine equal opportunity— is especially great.
Anti-Union Employers and Politicians
Ivo Camilo is one of the many American workers with firsthand knowledge of the risk that forming a union can pose. For 35 years, Camilo worked for Sacramento-based Blue Diamond Growers, where he and his co-workers started an organizing effort in October 2004. Management fought back immediately, distributing more than 30 anti-union flyers, forcing workers to attend group anti-union meetings and one-on-one sessions with supervisors, and threatening plant closure and a loss of pensions and benefits if the workers formed a union. Then, less than one week after Camilo and others presented the company with a letter stating they had formed an organizing committee, Camilo was suspended and subsequently fired on trumped-up charges. Two other workers were fired shortly thereafter. In March 2006, an NLRB administrative law judge ruled Blue Diamond had committed 20 labor law violations, including Camilo's discharge. Camilo was finally reinstated in April 2006, a year after his unlawful firing. More workers have been fired and more hearings held, yet still the company persists in doing all it can to block the workers from exercising their right to form a union.
Sherri Buffkin understands the risks as well, albeit from the vantage point of a company manager carrying out orders to repel worker organizing. After workers began their union organizing campaign at hog processing giant Smithfield Foods, the company required Buffkin, a division manager, to monitor employees, find out where they stood on the union, mete out punishment and rewards accordingly, and file daily reports on union activity. She was coached on what to say about potentially dire consequences of forming a union and directed to fire hardworking, loyal employees whose only offense was their desire to organize for better conditions on the job. She witnessed the company's cynical attempts to pit black and Hispanic workers against each other and its threat of immigration enforcement to stifle organizing among Latinos. Under duress, she signed false NLRB affidavits. When she could no longer live with the lies, she told the company that if called to testify, she would tell the truth. For that, despite her solid performance record, she was fired. Now, more than ten years after workers began to organize and despite legal findings of numerous, repeated and massive labor law violations by Smithfield, workers at the plant still have not had a free and fair chance to decide on union representation.
Camilo and Buffkin’s accounts are only two anecdotes in an epic saga of how employers, anti-union consultants, and anti-worker politicians and judges have joined forces to suppress and deny the right of workers to form unions.
Next Section: Union Representation
