Every 23 Minutes, Someone Is Fired at Work for Trying to Form a Union

by Mike Hall, May 9, 2006

While you are reading this, or sometime not long after, a worker will be fired for doing something perfectly legal and supposedly protected by the nation’s labor laws—trying to join with their co-workers to form a union in their workplace.

Bob Boyle, Brian Breining and Brian Smith are three of more than 20,000 workers fired every year—about one every 23 minutes—because they want to join a union.

The workers say they were fired for trying to win USW International Union’s (USW’s) representation in two workplaces. Speaking at a special Capitol Hill forum on the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) sponsored by the Americans for Democratic Action, they told how management harassed and intimidated them and their co-workers, eventually firing the three men.

The Employee Free Choice Act (H.R. 1696 and S. 842) would make the process of choosing a union more fair and eliminate the routine and often vicious anti-union campaigns mounted by many employers. It would strengthen workers’ rights to choose representation by requiring employers to recognize a union after a majority of employees sign authorization cards. It also would provide for mediation and arbitration of first-contract disputes and authorize stronger penalties for violation of labor law when workers seek to form a union.

In Dover, Ohio, Breining and Smith were both active in trying to win a voice at work with the USW at Cultured Stone Co., an Owens Corning subsidiary. They say the safety conditions at the 70-year-old manufactured stone warehouse were “tragic,” with holes in the floor, windows falling out of their frames, huge leaks in the roof. Medical premiums were soaring. Management showed favoritism to some employees and harassed others. There were huge wage gaps between workers doing the same job. Says Smith, a former employee of the month:

The reason we wanted a union wasn’t what most people typically think. It was to have a grievance procedure, for accountability to management, to have an up-to-date handbook, equal opportunity, so two identical situations wouldn’t be handled in different ways depending on who you are—favoritism or harassment, depending on which individual you are….

But when the workers began to organize, Breining says:

It didn’t work because the company spread anti-union propaganda. They slandered us. And they gave everyone a 3 percent pay increase across the board….They ran a campaign to shoot us down….We put our organizing committee together. It wasn’t long after that when I was fired. That wasn’t the reason they gave, but that’s what happened. Jan. 24, 2006, was my last day with the company. I’d been the safest guy on the floor for four years. I was a fork lifter. In one week’s time, I went from a spotless record, never being reprimanded, never having a safety incident, to being fired. It was as simple as that. I got fired over trumped-up safety violations….Since then, things have been terrible. How do you pay your bills? What do you put on your resume when you’ve been railroaded out of a job for doing nothing wrong but standing up for your rights? If EFCA gives employees any kind of voice in the workplace, if we can look out for our rights as citizens of the United States, I’m all for it. It should have been automatic.

After 17 years as a painter at Osterling’s Sandblasting and Painting Co. in Butler, PA., Boyle, 57, was summarily fired over his support for the USW. He wanted a strong union that would end the company’s practice requiring Boyle to pay for his own workplace respirator.

“A simple card-check system is actually more democratic” than the current National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB’s) election process, Cornell University historian Jefferson Cowie said at the forum, which included a panel of labor experts.

In an April 27 column on Common Dreams Cowie explains:

EFCA promises to take what is now a nasty, bruising, and hopelessly lawyer-dominated organizing process and turn it into a simple and equitable matter of getting a majority of employees to sign union cards. In addition to simple “card-check” or majority verification, EFCA provides mechanisms to prevent employers from starting a war of attrition against workers once they have selected a union by sending the issue to mediation if 90 days pass without a contract. It also contains several protections for workers including treble back pay for the discriminatory discharge of union organizers.

Former NLRB member and AFL-CIO legal counsel Sarah Fox told the forum audience that employers have a fearsome sword to wave over workers’ heads during a union campaign—their jobs:

Employers have a huge amount of latitude in our system. An employer can fire because they don’t like the color of your hair.

Members of the AFL-CIO union movement have signed up a bipartisan group of Employee Free Choice Act co-sponsors—215 in the House, three short of a majority—and 42 in the Senate. But Republican lawmakers aren’t likely to allow a vote on the legislation even if it does gain majority support. A more likely scenario would bring a vote on legislation backed by Big Business and anti-worker lawmakers that would ban the majority sign-up process.

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