| Greater Hartford Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO |
Anti-Union Campaign Aims to Undermine Workers' Voice and Political PowerIf you've seen a TV commercial with Vince Curatola (better known as Johnny "Sack" Sacramoni in the HBO hit series "The Sopranos") in which he is pretending to be a threatening and overbearing union "boss," then you've seen one of the latest efforts in a well-coordinated anti-union campaign. In the commercial, "The Sopranos" character personifies a threatening unionist who is scaring a would-be member into signing a union membership card.
This is a slam at the Employee Free Choice Act, which would allow workers to indicate their desire to form a union by signing a card. While there is no other membership or representational organization in America that requires its members to cast votes in order to join it, the opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act describe the bill as a tool that will open the doors to union intimidation. The real aim of the ad campaign, however, is to subvert the political power of working people, who, when joined together through their chosen unions, have more of a voice and more political clout than they do individually. (A related commercial attacks Al Franken, the Democratic U.S. Senate candidate in Minnesota.)
The completely misnamed Coalition for a Democratic Workplace (made up of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, among others) and a subgroup of the Center for Union Facts called the Employee Freedom Action Committee are two of the main players in the current anti-union campaign. The groups have mounted television ads, print ads, letters to the editor and much more in an effort to paint unionization as bad and employees' freedom to choose unionism as "hazardous." The so-called Employee Freedom Action Committee is a new nonprofit organization that specializes in "astro-turfing"—that is, setting up shallow state organizations that look like they are grass-roots organizations. An article in the Willamette Week (Oregon) has a great description of the committee.
What the groups don't mention is the millions of employer dollars that go into fighting employees' efforts to unionize every year, the pressure and intimidation that go into employer one-on-one meetings with employees to "set them straight" about unionism, and the workers who are fired for their unionizing efforts. They also don't mention the better pay and benefits that accompany a collectively bargained contract (which is voted on through secret ballot), or the improvement in the standard of living for those who decide to unionize.
As for anti-union organizations touting the right to privacy when it comes to signing a card versus conducting a vote for unionization, the group American Rights at Work notes how unbelievable it is that "business interests would suddenly care about privacy now, when corporations increasingly monitor employees' every move, including e-mail, home calls, personal belongings and even interactions outside of the workplace."
When you see these attacks, fight back. Before these attacks come your way, make your voice heard. Preserving the right to choose unionization and ensuring an effective method of indicating that choice are essential to protect the right to be heard and to better our standard of living. Use these facts to arm yourself.
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