More on Union Organizing
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Categories: Action Alerts, Consumer and Worker Protection, Corporate Accountability / Workers' Rights, Economic Fairness and Security, Honest and Ethical Government, Civil Rights and Equality, Social Justice, Property Rights, Workers' Rights
Categories: Action Alerts, Consumer and Worker Protection, Corporate Accountability / Workers' Rights, Economic Fairness and Security, Honest and Ethical Government, Civil Rights and Equality, Social Justice, Property Rights, Workers' Rights
Again from the hinterlands, I post this with the imprimatur of friend and writer Bill Onasch, a union activist and resident of the great state of Kansas. Thoughtful words to be considered in the debate:
Shocked But Not Surprised
That's how I felt after reading an article on yesterday's online Wall Street Journal entitled, Unions Forge Secret Pacts With Major Employers. The unions involved are SEIU and UNITE-HERE. The corporations are British based Compass Groups; French based Sodexo (who recently dropped an h from their name); and also Philadelphia based Aramark-though the unions claim they have reneged on their deal.
These companies are huge, with hundreds of thousands of workers in dozens of countries-nearly 400,000 employed in North America. All are involved in institutional food service-schools, hospitals, nursing homes, prisons, military bases. Aramark is also a major player in managing conference, entertainment and sporting facilities and uniform rentals.
While the power of these employers is formidable they lack the potent threat routinely made in manufacturing--to offshore the work. In many cases these companies are also dependent on political approval of their service contracts. It should be possible to organize, and win significant improvements, for their mainly low wage workers. Normally we would applaud efforts by SEIU and UNITE-HERE to unionize the industry.
The problem is these "fast growing" unions seldom actually organize workers. I was taught organizing in the UE back when Hugh Harley was Director of Organization. He emphasized that the goal was not to put together a successful election campaign to win an NLRB election; it was to assist the workers to start organizing their power to control the tempo and conditions of work on the job. Recognition of the union means little if the workers are not prepared for inevitable battles to negotiate, and later enforce, a decent union contract.
That is not the approach of these Change to Win leaders. They make deals on the highest corporate level for chunks of the workforce. They rough out a pattern for contracts for the newly "organized." Once the deals are in place they send in the staff to establish a bureaucratic hierarchy and dues collection.
Not being greedy, Andy Stern and Bruce Raynor didn't seek all the workers at these three giants, only a modest slice of them-20,000 Compass, 11,000 Sodexo-approximately ten percent of their wage earner workforces. A confidential SEIU internal memo-leaked to the WSJ-- says,
"Local unions are not free to engage in organizing activities at any Compass or Sodexho locations unless the sites have been designated."
The companies designate the sites where the unions can "organize." According to the WSJ article,
"The agreements enable the unions to organize workers through a simple card-signing process in which the companies agree to remain neutral, rather than a secret-ballot election. The companies agree to provide the unions with lists of employees and access to workers."
That's a far cry from any organizing drive I've ever seen. Just establishing the names of those in the bargaining unit is almost always a protracted, contested process with the Labor Board. Typically union organizers are kept off company property while the bosses hold all kinds of captive audience and one-on-one meetings during working hours to blast the union. But with this boss secret pre-approval about 15,000 have been "organized" over the past couple of years.
Of course, the bosses expect some consideration for this unusual generosity. Stern and Raynor agreed to forfeit the right to strike for their lucky future members. They further pledged not to bad mouth the companies either in public or on the shop floor. The Change to Win partners will undoubtedly be of assistance to their corporate partners in smoothing the way with politicians.
Not all in the SEIU are pleased with these hitherto secret organizing successes. The article quotes Zev Kvitky, president of a small SEIU local that represents food-service and custodial workers at Stanford University,
"We really believe that Stern and the international are putting growth in numbers ahead of any other consideration of what a union means in the lives of working people."
We'll have more to say later about secret organizing.
Bill Onasch
Shocked But Not Surprised
That's how I felt after reading an article on yesterday's online Wall Street Journal entitled, Unions Forge Secret Pacts With Major Employers. The unions involved are SEIU and UNITE-HERE. The corporations are British based Compass Groups; French based Sodexo (who recently dropped an h from their name); and also Philadelphia based Aramark-though the unions claim they have reneged on their deal.
These companies are huge, with hundreds of thousands of workers in dozens of countries-nearly 400,000 employed in North America. All are involved in institutional food service-schools, hospitals, nursing homes, prisons, military bases. Aramark is also a major player in managing conference, entertainment and sporting facilities and uniform rentals.
While the power of these employers is formidable they lack the potent threat routinely made in manufacturing--to offshore the work. In many cases these companies are also dependent on political approval of their service contracts. It should be possible to organize, and win significant improvements, for their mainly low wage workers. Normally we would applaud efforts by SEIU and UNITE-HERE to unionize the industry.
The problem is these "fast growing" unions seldom actually organize workers. I was taught organizing in the UE back when Hugh Harley was Director of Organization. He emphasized that the goal was not to put together a successful election campaign to win an NLRB election; it was to assist the workers to start organizing their power to control the tempo and conditions of work on the job. Recognition of the union means little if the workers are not prepared for inevitable battles to negotiate, and later enforce, a decent union contract.
That is not the approach of these Change to Win leaders. They make deals on the highest corporate level for chunks of the workforce. They rough out a pattern for contracts for the newly "organized." Once the deals are in place they send in the staff to establish a bureaucratic hierarchy and dues collection.
Not being greedy, Andy Stern and Bruce Raynor didn't seek all the workers at these three giants, only a modest slice of them-20,000 Compass, 11,000 Sodexo-approximately ten percent of their wage earner workforces. A confidential SEIU internal memo-leaked to the WSJ-- says,
"Local unions are not free to engage in organizing activities at any Compass or Sodexho locations unless the sites have been designated."
The companies designate the sites where the unions can "organize." According to the WSJ article,
"The agreements enable the unions to organize workers through a simple card-signing process in which the companies agree to remain neutral, rather than a secret-ballot election. The companies agree to provide the unions with lists of employees and access to workers."
That's a far cry from any organizing drive I've ever seen. Just establishing the names of those in the bargaining unit is almost always a protracted, contested process with the Labor Board. Typically union organizers are kept off company property while the bosses hold all kinds of captive audience and one-on-one meetings during working hours to blast the union. But with this boss secret pre-approval about 15,000 have been "organized" over the past couple of years.
Of course, the bosses expect some consideration for this unusual generosity. Stern and Raynor agreed to forfeit the right to strike for their lucky future members. They further pledged not to bad mouth the companies either in public or on the shop floor. The Change to Win partners will undoubtedly be of assistance to their corporate partners in smoothing the way with politicians.
Not all in the SEIU are pleased with these hitherto secret organizing successes. The article quotes Zev Kvitky, president of a small SEIU local that represents food-service and custodial workers at Stanford University,
"We really believe that Stern and the international are putting growth in numbers ahead of any other consideration of what a union means in the lives of working people."
We'll have more to say later about secret organizing.
Bill Onasch
