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Enterprise Throws up Roadblocks for Workers Seeking Union |
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If you want to rent a car from Enterprise Rent-A-Car, all you need is a valid driver’s license and a credit card, and away you go. But try to form a union, and the company throws up roadblocks everywhere.
Workers at the Enterprise facility in Lynn, Mass., want to better their lives by joining a union. So 23 out of 30 car-prep employees and drivers signed cards saying they want IUE-Communications Workers of America Local 201 to represent them. But management rejected their request. The workers and community supporters then picketed and carried signs in the car rental parking lot.
In a letter to management signed by the majority, Enterprise workers wrote:
Collective bargaining would provide us with a direct way to address on-the-job safety and health problems like poor ergonomic design of shuttle vans, back and knee problems from lifting heavy luggage, and exposures to dangerous chemicals because of the cleaning process or from car exhaust.
Collective bargaining would also be the best way to resolve discriminatory practices in the hiring, promotion and scheduling of employees and the abuse of workers who are forced to work full-time hours at part-time pay.
Jeff Crosby, president of the North Shore Labor Council in Lynn, who is assisting the workers, says it shouldn’t be this hard for workers to join a union:
We have a clear majority, and the workers just want to sit down and try to fix this company. They have filed OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) complaints and discrimination complaints, and it seems the only way they can get justice is to organize.This is an obvious example of why we need the Employee Free Choice Act.
If the Employee Free Choice Act had been in effect, Enterprise would have had to recognize the workers’ choice of a union through majority sign-up. Currently, employers can reject the workers’ cards and demand an election supervised by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
Majority sign-up is much faster than the government-run balloting process and leaves less time for employers to harass and intimidate workers so they will back off from joining a union.
Enterprise management already has begun some of the shenanigans employers use to thwart workers’ efforts to form a union, Crosby says.
The company has fired two workers, and management refused to let one of the most vocal union supporters return to work Tuesday, Crosby says, after he was out because of injury.
The union plans to file an unfair labor practice complaint with the NLRB over the incident.
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As the author of “Making Changes” I endorse the Employee Free Choice Act. My book is based on the union organizing I did in the early 1980’s. At that time, the attacks were just beginning against unions and the rights of working people. The first big attack on working people was led by President Reagan against the air traffic controllers in a union called PATCO. When the air traffic controllers went down in defeat, more defeats followed as the corporate board’s realized that the labor movement would do little to defend its fellow unions. Even when the workers in the Pitston strike and the Detroit Free Press strike showed they wanted to fight the bosses, the top union officials did little to support them. These top union officials had lived for decades in an economy that never required the kind of class struggle that had existed in previous decades, such as during the 1930 and 1940’s. But both worker and boss were entering a new stage in the economy. A recession that compared with the Great Depression of the 1930’s was upon us. The labor leadership knew nothing about how to lead a workers’ struggle in this kind of economy. The labor leadership had identified with the middle class, played golf with the bosses, took vacations called “union conventions” at the expense of the members of the union. So the union leaders had no muscle and were not in fight readiness.
I remember, during a meeting with my union organizer, I was warned that the company that we were doing battle with would call for an election. If workers have already signed cards stating that they want to be represented by a union, what more is needed? Calling for an election sounds like a democratic action, but in fact, it gives the company time to harass and intimidate workers who are not yet strong in their belief in the union. I show this intimidation process going on in my novel, Making Changes. You see the vulnerability of the working women. So many issues come up that keep them from focusing on the one big battle of their lives. They give some effort to the cause and then they pull back. They look constantly for another way out—go to college? Find a husband? Be a docile obedient wife? Become a supervisor? Which way to go? But the low wages, the harsh conditions and the lack of opportunity squeeze them until they see no other way out. They sign the cards for union representation. Then the company uses a process called an “election” to try to confuse and scare them.
When the employees sign cards or petitions stating that they want to be represented by a union, they should be represented. I would go so far as to say that a majority should not be needed, but that the union should immediately start representing those who have signed a card. If the company does not recognized the union as the representative of the workers, then the workers will be squeezed into a new situation, one that requires stronger effort in enforcing their choice, and that is the sit-down strike. Workers may need to revert back to the old tactics of the sit-down strikes of the 1930’s. These were very effective. The workers simply stopped working, just sat at their desk or machine until the union was able to gain a signed contract with the company. Then the workers could go back to work knowing they were the one’s who enforced their right to union recognition. No doubts about it. See: http://www.hilliardbooks.net