AFL-CIO’s Acuff Takes on Union-Busters in Debate

Kelly Beringer

Katrina Blomdahl, the AFL-CIO Voice@Work communications specialist, describes a debate that highlighted the impoverishment of the anti-union cause. 

Yesterday in Chicago, AFL-CIO Organizing Director Stewart Acuff hit one out of the park for working people in a debate over the freedom to form unions and the Employee Free Choice Act when he went toe to toe with a member of the nation’s multibillion dollar union-busting industry.

Although the debate was not structured to result in an official “winner,” one audience member described Acuff’s opponent, Michael Flaherty—partner of the infamous union-busting law firm Jackson Lewis—as “out of his league.” As Acuff said after the debate:

The truth is that none of the disingenuous legal mumbo-jumbo of union-busting law firms makes any sense to people who are trying to form a union to bargain for a better life.

The Employee Free Choice Act will protect the collective bargaining rights of workers and lift up the middle class—and nothing is more fundamental than that.

The union-busting lawyers say they want to protect the secret ballot because they care about workers’ rights, but as a multi-million dollar cottage industry serving the basest interests of Big Business, it’s clear the only thing they care about is their coffers.

Sponsored by the Chicago Chapter of the Labor and Employment Relations Association (LERA) and moderated by Bob Bruno, associate professor at the Institute of Labor & Industrial Relations at the University of Illinois, the debate drew more than 60 union representatives and members, union- and management-side attorneys, human resources professionals and academics.

At least one worker, who is in the process of forming a union, brought a real-world perspective to the many lawyers in the room.

Kelly Beringer, a labor and delivery nurse, is working with AFSCME) Council 31 to form a union at Resurrection Health Care, one of the largest hospital systems in Chicago. She was visibly upset when asking her question—she knows all too well what it feels like to be on the receiving end of an anti-union campaign.

We are made to feel like traitors and disloyal when we talk about forming our union. Union newsletters and legislation updates have been removed from break rooms and torn down from our locker rooms. We are constantly told we are free to choose, but how is this freedom of choice, when words like “disloyal,” “extortionist” and “negative” are used to describe those of us who have made a pro-union choice? What message does this convey to other workers? How can someone possibly make a free choice under any of these circumstances?

But Beringer never got a good answer to her question. Faced with the real-life experiences of a local worker, most of the pro-management side of the audience were stunned speechless.

In fact, Resurrection has settled 14 charges of federal labor law violations with the National Labor Relations Board without admission of guilt since the inception of the campaign four years ago. And in June, an Illinois administrative law judge ruled the company violated wage and hour laws in refusing to pay overtime to some workers.

The debate in Chicago came just days after reporter Art Levine published an exposé on the inner workings of Jackson Lewis’s “union avoidance” practices for In These Times.

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