Labor unions, like the United Nations, are all too often judged
by what they are envisioned as being — not by what they actually
are or what they actually do.
Many people, who do not look beyond the vision or the rhetoric
to the reality, still think of labor unions as protectors of
working people from their employers. And union bosses still employ
that kind of rhetoric. However, someone once said, “When I speak I
put on a mask, but when I act I must take it off.”
That mask has been coming off, more and more, especially during
the Obama administration, and what is revealed underneath is very
ugly, very cynical and very dangerous.
First there was the grossly misnamed “Employee Free Choice Act”
that the administration tried to push through Congress. What it
would have destroyed was precisely what it claimed to be promoting
— a free choice by workers as to whether or not they wanted to
join a labor union.
Ever since the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, workers
have been able to express their free choice of joining or not
joining a labor union in a federally conducted election with a
secret ballot.
As workers in the private sector have, over the years,
increasingly voted to reject joining labor unions, union bosses
have sought to replace secret ballots with signed documents —
signed in the presence of union organizers and under the pressures,
harassments or implicit threats of those organizers.
Now that the Obama administration has appointed a majority of
the members of the National Labor Relations Board, the NLRB
leadership has imposed new requirements that employers supply union
organizers with the names and home addresses of every employee. Nor
do employees have a right to decline to have this personal
information given out to union organizers, under NLRB rules.
In other words, union organizers will now have the legal right
to pressure, harass or intimidate workers on the job or in their
own homes, in order to get them to sign up with the union. Among
the consequences of not signing up is union reprisal on the job if
the union wins the election. But physical threats and actions are
by no means off the table, as many people who get in the way of
unions have learned.
Workers who do not want to join a union will now have to decide
how much harassment of themselves and their family they are going
to have to put up with, if they don’t knuckle under.
In the past, unions had to make the case to workers that it was
in their best interests to join. Meanwhile, employers would make
their case to the same workers that it was in their best interest
to vote against joining.
When the unions began losing those elections, they decided to
change the rules. And after Barack Obama was elected President of
the United States, with large financial support from labor unions,
the rules were in fact changed by Obama’s NLRB.
As if to make the outcome of workers’ “choices” more of a
foregone conclusion, the time period between the announcement of an
election and the election itself has been shortened by the
NLRB.
In other words, the union can spend months, or whatever amount
of time it takes, for them to prepare and implement an organizing
campaign beforehand — and then suddenly announce a deadline date
for the decision on having or not having a union. The union
organizers can launch their full-court press before the employers
have time to organize a comparable counter-argument or the workers
have time to weigh their decision, while being pressured.
The last thing this process is concerned about is a free choice
for workers. The first thing it is concerned about is getting a
captive group of union members, whose compulsory dues provide a
large sum of money to be spent at the discretion of union bosses,
to provide those bosses with both personal perks and political
power to wield, on the basis of their ability to pick and choose
where to make campaign contributions from the union members’
dues.
Union elections do not recur like other elections. They are like
some Third World elections: “One man, one vote — one time.” And
getting a recognized union unrecognized is an uphill struggle.
But, so long as many people refuse to see the union for what it
is, or the Obama administration for what it is, this cynical and
corrupt process can continue.
COPYRIGHT 2012 CREATORS.COM
