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Pennsylvania Union Members to Specter: Pass Employee Free Choice |
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This past weekend, Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter attended his first meeting of the state Democratic Party as its newest member in Congress. Before he introduced himself to elected officials, however, he paid an important visit to a Pittsburgh rally for the Employee Free Choice Act.
Specter’s appearance at the rally is on video in two parts, here and here.
Before an audience of hundreds of union members, Specter—who was supportive of the Employee Free Choice Act in past years and will be a key vote this year—tried to make his case as to why union members should give him another term in the U.S. Senate.
Specter talked about how he defied his former party earlier this year, voting for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which he said means “a lot of jobs” for Pennsylvania, and noted other key votes he’s taken to strengthen Pennsylvania jobs. He also said he’s going to “work with” President Obama on health care.
Members of the audience were energetic, but they also were ready to challenge Specter to support working families by voting to pass the Employee Free Choice Act. Specter replied:
I believe you’ll be satisfied with my vote on this issue, about union organizing and a first contract, just as you’ve been satisfied with the 22 times I voted for Davis-Bacon, just as you’ve been satisfied with all the times I voted to increase the minimum wage, every time I have voted for extending unemployment compensation, and the vote I made on the stimulus package, which will bring thousands of jobs for people in Pennsylvania and across America.
It’s clear from the rally the union movement and our many allies are enthusiastically mobilized to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, which would strengthen Pennsylvania’s economy, and ready to fight on behalf of leaders who will vote to protect workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain. They’ll be watching Specter closely in this critical fight.
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A number of my friends work at Price Chopper supermarkets in upstate New York, and I worked there myself for several years. These stores are non-union, and the people who work here are non-union. They really ought to be union, because the people who run the stores treat them very badly. Some of them make decent hourly rates, but management manipulates their hours and controls them in that way. It also fires a lot of people who are approaching the dates upon which they would be eligible for benefits (health insurance and retirement etc.). In the past there have been rumours that the company says it will close down any store that votes for a union. In a recent meeting of department managers, management representatives told department managers to issue written disciplinery notices to as many people as possible so that they could cut payroll by firing people. This chain is rife with favouritism, nepotism, and bias of all sorts.
Just recently the chain held meetings of department managers in which they warned that union representatives would be circulating cards for people to sign requesting union representation. The person reporting this to me they didn’t make any overt threats.
The person who told me about this also told me that he personally doesn’t want to see a union in the stores, and he says the majority of people there agree with him. They say that they have had unions when working at other chains, and that the union reps were in bed with management, and that everything depended on seniority, that the unions kept anybody from innovating or doing anything that would help business. Of course they don’t like paying union dues. They seem to look on a union as simply another level of management. They are not that politically aware, and many of them watch Fox News. I have told them that however unfair the unions could be, management was a lot less fair, and they would at least be able to deselect a union rep or union but the only way to deselect management is to quit. The people I spoke to also said that any problems they had could be solved by going to the Human Resources person. I told them that this could solve problems that upper management wanted to solve, but those problems they didn’t want to solve would be ignored. As it is, even for small problems they often tell people to see their store manager and he/she may be the source of the problem.
Granted that we are all working as hard as we can to make it easier for workers to organize, what exactly can we tell people, how can we show them, that the only thing worse than belonging to a union is not belonging to one because then they can do anything they want to you.