by James Parks, Jun 6, 2007

Sen. Bob Menendez (right) and Rep. Chris Smith (left) of New Jersey met with Rutgers staff Feb. 12 to support their efforts to join a union.

Some 2,000 administrative, professional and supervisory staff at Rutgers University—including administrative assistants, program directors, chefs and accountants—are union members, thanks to the strong connection between political strength and building the union movement.

The New Jersey labor board this morning certified that a majority of the workers signed cards authorizing the Union of Rutgers Administrators/AFT to represent them. But the victory would not have come without strong support from elected officials—including the governor, a U.S. senator and key state legislators—and community, religious and union groups.

This win comes on the heels of the decision by nearly 1,200 dealers at Bally’s Atlantic City who voted to join the UAW this week and 850 dealers at Caesars Atlantic City and 600 dealers at Trump Plaza who voted for UAW representation in March. 

 New Jersey State AFL-CIO President Charles Wowkanech says: 

For more than 10 years, the New Jersey State AFL-CIO has worked tirelessly to build one of the finest labor political programs in the nation. Never has the value of being able to tie strong political action to aggressive organizing been more evident. 

In New Jersey, union political education and member mobilization have helped enact a law that allows public employees to form unions by signing cards indicating their support. Even so, the Rutgers campaign started out contentious, with management sending mass anti-union e-mails and otherwise communicating that workers should not choose to unionize.

The anti-union campaign stopped after workers got an outpouring of support from their elected leaders. Gov. Jon Corzine (D) and U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), who were elected with strong support from working families, both visited the campus to speak about the benefits of having a union. Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) also publicly backed the workers.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeny says the victory shows the value of political education and mobilization. 

This campaign shows that when America’s elected leaders stand up behind workers’ freedom to form unions, they provide a strong counterbalance to the fact that employers hold virtually all the power in the workplace and that labor law is heavily stacked against workers. 

A union card is the single best middle class supporting program in our nation, and all workers should have the freedom to form a union without management coercion and harassment. The Senate should pass the Employee Free Choice Act and give all workers the basic freedom to fairly choose a union.   

After supporters wrote letters and held rallies to send the message to university officials that the workers deserve a chance to make a better living by forming a union, Rutgers President Richard McCormick signed a neutrality agreement in January pledging the school will remain neutral in the workers’ effort to gain a voice on the job.

Yet even after signing the agreement, McCormick threw up roadblocks to the workers joining the union. He questioned how many employees were eligible to sign the authorization cards and created other diversions.

McCormick had a change of mind after key state leaders and members of the legislature, including Senate President Richard Codey and Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts strongly urged him to allow the workers to exercise their freedom to join a union. The same two state legislative leaders were instrumental in getting McCormick to sign the neutrality agreement.

The pro-worker lawmakers didn’t get elected by accident. Because New Jersey has a new series of elections every year, Wowkanech says union members there “eat, sleep and drink politics,” and the state’s union activists are instrumental in ensuring that working family-friendly candidates are consistently elected. There are 450 union members in elected office at every level in New Jersey, including seven members of the state legislature who wrote to McCormick supporting the workers.

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