Florida Union Members Protest Anti-Worker Corporate Training

Florida workers protest a corporate union-busting seminar.

Paul Pimentel, research director for the Sheet Metal Workers (SMWIA), reports on the fight to pass the Employee Free Choice Act.

As the debate heats up in the U.S. Congress over passage of the Employee Free Choice Act—a bill that would allow workers’ freedom to bargain with corporations for better wages and benefits—Big Business is spending millions of dollars to kill the bill with a disingenuous disinformation campaign that includes TV and radio advertisements, lobbying members of Congress and holding nationwide seminars like the one held earlier today by the South Florida Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) Association. 

This time, scores of union activists and allies were on hand to greet seminar goers and get the truth out about the Employee Free Choice Act.

Seminars like the one held by the ABC are similar to one attended by Art Levine, an undercover reporter who now writes for The Huffington Post. In the seminar, an attorney from the infamous law firm Jackson Lewis remarked on handling pro-union supervisors: 

“You know what we do with a supervisor who comes to you and says, ‘Hey, boss, it wasn’t me, they said it was the company’?” asked Stieff. He jerked his tie upwards against his neck to suggest a hanging—the only time the lawyers openly hinted at lawbreaking.

What if we simply wanted to fire union organizers? That was possible to do, said Stieff, as long as you were careful to do so for other reasons. “Union sympathizers aren’t entitled to any more protection than other workers,” he explained. But the firing could not be linked to their union activity.”

Jackson Lewis made headlines recently when its efforts during a recent campaign led to more than 120 labor law violations and $7.75 million in fines. Its client, EnerSys, sued the firm for waging a “relentless and unlawful campaign to oust the union.”

SMWIA Local 32 and the unions of the South Florida AFL-CIO have made thousands of calls to Sen. Bill Nelson thanking him for co-sponsoring the Employee Free Choice Act.  And they have also delivered more than 15,000 letters to Sens. Nelson and Mel Martinez, as well as the South Florida Congressional Delegation, asking them for their support of the bill.

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