Workers Want Congress To Reform Labor Law To End Employer Intimidation

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.laborradio.org/node/5142

Workers Want Congress To Reform Labor Law To End Employer Intimidation - 01/25/07

By Doug Cunningham

Workers like Bill Longhorn, a forklift driver in Ohio fired for union organizing by Consolidated Biscuit Company, continue to fight for their legal right to form unions against employer intimidation and flouting of the law. Longhorn says management openly threatened to fire him for excercising his right to organize.

: “She actually told me in front of all these people that if the union lost the election I would be fired. And the day after the election I was fired.”

That’s why Longhorn supports changing labor law with the Employee Free Choice Act to make it easier for workers to choose unions free of employer intimidation. The National Labor Relations Board ordered Bill’s employer to give him his job back with full back pay but with no teeth I nthe law he’s still waiting.

: “Even when these employers lose in these hearings they win. It’s been four and a half years, they’ve done nothing. They don’t have to do anything. This law needs to be changed.”

Maggie Nielson is a Chicago nurse at Our Lady of the Resurrection Hospital.

: “Despite Resurrection’s intimidation tactics and other effects to keep us from organizing I continue to fight for my freedom to join a union. I know that to provide the best care for our patients we must first improve working conditions for ourselves and have a voice in how we deliver the care.”

[Zodiak]

1. I agree with this

Workers unite!!!

For far too long we have seen our pay, our benefits, our dignity, our jobs, and our privacy fly out the door in favor of these leeches.

[papau]

2. This long overdue - an attempt to start unions at 3 ins companies I worked for had the same illegal

response by management - namely finding an informant who for cash would turn in a list of those signing cards or signing interest sheets, and then firing a few very publicly, and firing all over the next 6 months.

The Nixon NLRB , the Reagan, and the Bush NLRB never took action, all either claiming there was not enough evidence, or letting the issue of management malfeasance become moot by the long passage of time for review that allowed management to get rid of all those with evil union ideas.

Indeed the debit insurance agents when they unionized caused management for the next 2 decades and a half to look for ways to get rid of them - despite the high profits their part of the company produced because of their efforts - thus stopping the capital formation process that is life insurance from helping the poor. Now life insurance is all about tax breaks and the corporations and richer folks that can best make use of those tax breaks.

[unkachuck]

3. we need to get serious....

....about allowing workers to have a say in their economic life and time is long overdue....hear that, Nancy?....

....isn't it wonderful how business can pick and chose which laws they follow?....wouldn't you like to do the same?....

....we get our 10 minutes of democracy every two years but have to spend 8 hours or more everyday in economic fascism....Employee Free Choice Act needs to be at the top of our legislative agenda....