Grocers travel to Vegas to hear union buster in Chablis Room

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.examiner.com/x-2071-DC-Special-Interests-Examiner~y2009m2d6-Grocers-travel-to-Vegas-to-hear-union-buster-in-Chablis-Room?cid=exrss-DC-Special-Interests-Examiner


February 6, 7:19 AM
by Ron Moore

Yesterday’s report that employers attended an anti-worker seminar at a country club is followed by this report of grocers attending an anti-worker seminar in Las Vegas. Michael Mishak of the Las Vegas Sun is reporting that the National Grocers Association gathered at Paris Las Vegas for its annual convention to hear union buster Mark Trapp of the law firm Epstein Becker & Green.

The presentation was titled “Let’s Get Ready To Rumble!!!”

Trapp warned the grocers that should the Employee Free Choice Act win congressional passage, they would be the ones without a choice. Unions, he said, are “bad for business,” and business had better start fighting back.

“We’re in a tight spot,” Trapp told the businessmen. “This thing is moving down the tracks but it’s not too late to stop it.”

In the end, Trapp instructed grocers to improve labor relations in the workplace and to communicate with members of Congress, because “this thing is ready-made to come after you guys.” Unions, he said, will pick the “low-hanging fruit.”

In the story the reporter errantly reports that the Employee Free Choice Act eliminates the secret ballot. In fact the bill eliminates the power of the employer to determine how workers choose to vote to organize. The EFCA allows workers to negotiate with their employer after a simple majority approve through a card check procedure. Only after an agreement is approved by a majority in a secret ballot election do the workers have a union.

Workers can educate Mr. Trapp and show him you are ready to rumble at [e-mail]

[pleah]

1. K&R

[Wapsie B]

2. I think the Unions should threaten to blow the whistle on Slotting Fees.

Margins have been tight for eons. But Slotting Fees/Shelving Fees are where stores make the real dough. Unions need to fight back.

[Ikonoklast]

3. Having worked in the retail food industry for over twenty-five years,

and being a UFCW member for that time, I can relate to these people and their tactics.

Our management spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on these anti-union seminars to learn union-busting tactics. Always seemed to be a different bunch each time.

These guys pop up and pick some real 'low-hanging fruit' as the employers get sucked into the latest scam by paying tons of hard-earned dough to every jerk with an anti-labor pitch and a nice haircut.

It was amazing that every time a contract was coming up, all of a sudden we were 'part of our team', 'our biggest asset', and 'we're in this together'. You could set a clock as to when they would start treating employees like humans, for six weeks before the contract came up.

Funny how the rest of the time we were overpaid, lazy, money-grubbing, anti-capitalist commies that would destroy America as we knew it with our negotiated benefits and vacations.

And they would always proclaim that THIS contract would be the one that put them out of business. If not this one, but the next one, FOR SURE.

Never happened.

If the UFCW gets a level playing field in order to organize WalMart, look out. It will be like a field fire on a hot August day.