Rite Aid’s Anti-Worker Tactics Show Need for Employee Free Choice

by Seth Michaels, Aug 12, 2009

Union members and allies protested Rite Aid’s unfair treatment of its workers.

Across the country, union members and allies are protesting Rite Aid’s unfair treatment of warehouse workers and demanding that Congress pass the Employee Free Choice Act to end management abuses and restore the freedom to bargain.

On Monday, supporters of the freedom to form unions gathered in seven cities, including outside a pharmacy industry conference in Boston, to demand that Rite Aid workers and all workers be able to form a union and bargain free of intimidation, coercion and illegal firing.

In 2006, Rite Aid warehouse workers in California, fed up with poor working conditions, attempted to join the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). The experience these workers had shows the need for the Employee Free Choice Act.

Rite Aid used a tactic that’s all too common when workers want to form a union and bargain: They hired a high-priced union-busting consulting firm, Oliver J. Bell & Associates, that carried out a campaign of intimidation against workers interested in the union. Even after successfully voting for a union last March, these workers still haven’t been able to get a first contract, and they contend that Rite Aid is still trying to undermine their union.

In a new report, “Rite Aid, Oliver J. Bell & Associates, and the Case for the Employee Free Choice Act,” Jobs with Justice (JwJ) examines the three-year history of Rite Aid’s hostile tactics against these workers, who have been denied their basic freedom to bargain for a better life.

The report concludes:

The experiences of workers at the Rite Aid distribution center in Lancaster, and of those at workplaces across the U.S., speak to the urgent need for significant labor law reform in this country. Current labor law is so weak and so weighted in favor of employers that company managers effectively get to make the decision about whether or not workers can form a union. Even when companies break the law, the penalties are so minimal they are considered just a cost of doing business.

JwJ activists and allies from across the union movement are spreading the word outside of Rite Aid stores in Boston; Philadelphia; Cleveland; Indianapolis; Richmond, Va.; Montpelier, Vt.; Portland, Ore.; and Bangor, Maine.

Carlos “Chico” Rubio, a Rite Aid worker, says workers like him need the Employee Free Choice Act to protect their freedom to bargain for a better life.

If we had the Employee Free Choice Act, we would already have a contract. All of the dozens of Unfair Labor Practices would not have gotten just a slap on the wrist. We would have already been in arbitration and had a contract by now, and they wouldn’t be able to continue to stall and intimidate workers. Right now, it’s like the employer gets to decide if we get a union. We don’t want anyone else to go through what we’ve had to go through just because they want to join a union.

You can read the full JwJ report on Rite Aid here.

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