Incoming thread re: one of the millions of ways companies make it nearly impossible for workers to organize a union
Yesterday, we opened our union hall up to workers at a local company seeking to organize. When I arrived, there were a surprising number of cars in the parking lot. Exciting! Except that most of them, it turns out, weren’t interested in a conversation.
I was approached by one of the pro-union workers I’ve been talking to for months. He told me that of the eight people present, only three were pro-union. The other five were: two Human Resources reps, one supervisor, and two anti-union workers, one of whom is married to an HR rep
This presents a few problems. First, let’s get the HR thing out of the way. For those not in the loop yet, HR IS NOT YOUR FRIEND THEY EXIST TO DEFEND THE COMPANY AND ARE AN ARM OF MANAGEMENT. I don’t care how nice and helpful *your* HR rep is at *your* company.
They’re not your friend. And when the going gets tough, and you start trying to form a union, they’ll have a choice to make: either help the company bust the union drive, or keep being your friend and get fired. One more time for those in the back: HR IS NOT YOUR FRIEND!
The fact that a supervisor and two HR reps were present is a pretty clear violation of the National Labor Relations Act, which prohibits employer surveillance of workers. This is both the most common employer violation in an union drive as well as the easiest for them to avoid.
So why do they do it? Because in a thousand different ways, our labor law is broken. The penalties for violating the NLRA are pitiful, even when compared to the pitiful enforcement mechanisms of other federal agencies like CFPB, OSHA, and EPA.
Which is why, among many other things, we need to adopt @MosheMarvit and Richard Kahlenberg’s proposal to add the right to organize to the Civil Rights Act and give workers the right to sue for damages, a right they currently do not have.
Until and unless workers are actually able to exercise the rights ostensibly protected by the NLRA, we will continue to see organizing drives flame out and with it, continuing wage stagnation and misery for most working people.
Finally, my main point here is that the decline in union density hasn’t happened in a vacuum. There is a vast and disciplined effort to undermine workers’ rights to collective workplace action. This is just one minor example. But it’s an anecdote that gets to the broader truth.
Here’s your main takeaways: 1) unions haven’t declined because workers don’t want them; they’ve declined because companies have too much power; and 2) HR IS NOT YOUR FRIEND! /end thread
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