Montana Company Demanded Workers Sign Document Saying They Wouldn’t Form a Union

by Seth Michaels, Aug 31, 2009

In Great Falls, Mont., a former manager has come forward to say that her company tried to compel workers to revoke their own freedom to form a union.

The Great Falls Tribune reports that Keri Gorder, who spent eight years working at the Cost Cutters hair salon in Great Falls, left after being asked to pressure employees into signing a one-page agreement that would nullify future attempts to form a union. The hair salon’s parent company, Regis Corp., wanted to compel employees to sign the agreement, which would nullify any future authorization on their part to form a union and get the chance to bargain for a better life.

Authorization cards are a standard, legal feature of both the majority sign-up process and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election process. They’re how workers show their interest in forming a union, and they’re an essential part of exercising this basic freedom. When a corporation—which controls workers’ jobs, hours and working conditions—tries to intimidate employees into revoking their own rights, it’s a sign of a broken system.

The fact that a company thought it could intimidate its employees into signing away bargaining rights is one more argument in favor of the Employee Free Choice Act, which would provide a free and fair process for workers to form unions, and real penalties for companies that break the law during workers’ attempts to form unions.

As Gorder says:

They were trying to scare the staff into signing that paper. I don’t feel like my staff or I should have signed it or should have had to sign it.

She says the company also compelled employees to watch an anti-union video during a mandatory meeting, a common tactic in union-busting campaigns.

Ole Stimac, the president of the Central Montana Labor Council, says that compelling employees to pre-empt their own freedom to form a union and bargain could be illegal under the National Labor Relations Act. Stimac said:

What it looks like they’re trying to do is get people to sign a waiver of their rights from now into eternity to ever organize a union. I’ve never seen anything like this before.

This whole thing is written in circles and has falsehoods in it. I don’t know why they would ever think that this could stand up in court. If a person could sign their rights away like this, I would find it deeply troubling.

Read the whole story here and the coverage at Union Review here.

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