Employee Free Choice Act: Making a Better Workplace for Everybody

by James Parks, Mar 13, 2007

Errol Hohrein

When Errol Hohrein signed on a year ago to work at Front Range Energy’s $50 million state-of-the-art ethanol plant in Windsor, Colo., he and his co-workers thought they were in on the ground floor of a booming industry.

National demand is booming for ethanol as a renewable automotive fuel, and Congress is authorizing tax incentives to build ethanol distilleries.

But within weeks, the company had reneged on its pledge of wage increases and economic benefits. Says Hohrein:

It was theft by deception.

Everybody was ready for a union. And when the workers ended up paying $900 a month for health insurance premiums, even though Front Range promised to provide them with a solid benefits package, some workers protested to management. And those workers were fired.

Late last month, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) issued an unfair labor practice complaint against Front Range. An administrative law judge will hear the workers’ stories May 15.

Instead of intimidating the workers, the firings infuriated them, Hohrein says.

This is a very conservative area, and most of these men have never been around or dealt with a union before. But they were adamant about joining a union because things got worse.

Hohrein says he also began to notice that safety procedures weren’t being followed and that workers were being put in dangerous conditions. But the company ignored workers’ complaints about unsafe situations.

Hohrein knew what it was like to be a union member. He had worked as a union boilermaker for 20 years before coming to Front Range. So he and several other workers contacted the United Steelworkers and began a drive to get a union.

More than 90 percent of the workers signed cards saying they wanted to join a union.

If the Employee Free Choice Act were the law today, the signed cards could have been submitted to the NLRB, and the labor board would have required Front Range to bargain with the union chosen by the employees.

But under current law, Front Range has the right to decide whether to honor the employees’ choice or to demand that they go through the NLRB election process, which gives the company an opportunity to pressure and harass workers into renouncing their decision to form a union.

So instead of honoring the employees’ choice, Front Range management “went crazy,” Hohrein says.

If you mentioned the union or even appeared to talk about the union, you were written up. Management held these meetings and trashed the union. If you were pro-union, you were living in a terrorist state, but those who backed management could do no wrong. One union supporter was written up for reading the paper on his break. That’s blatantly and obviously wrong.

When Hohrein began passing out union authorization cards, the company “acted like monsters and wouldn’t let co-workers near me for equipment maintenance consultation without prior permission.”

But intimidation and threats didn’t deter the workers, who voted, 12–11, for the union in December 2006. Just days after the election, Hohrein was fired.

Management thought by firing me, it would intimidate the men and bust the union.

The USW challenged his termination in charges filed with the NLRB. The USW also filed six charges before the NLRB for an accumulation of labor law violations at Front Range Energy that include harassment and ordering employees not to talk to union advocates. The company also provided employees who didn’t support the union with better conditions than union supporters.

The laws that supposedly protect workers are “toothless,” Hohrein says.

We need laws like the Employee Free Choice Act that really protect workers. The corporations hold 99.9 percent of the power. Management can say whatever it wants anytime about the union, but the union has no access to the plant. The company sits right on people who even say they want a union. And if workers complain and go all the way and win [in an NLRB hearing], all the company has to do is put up a sign saying, “We won’t do it again.”

The Employee Free Choice Act would level the playing field and give workers a strong voice, Hohrein says.

It’s not about what you need; it’s about making the workplace a better place for everyone.