Thread by @jacremes

I wish this article about Starbucks firing unionists mentioned how extremely common this is. Research by @KBronfenbrenner has shown that pro-union workers are fired in more than half of organizing drives. (Have I got this right, Kate?) nytimes.com/2022/02/08/bus…

Workers organizing their unions get fired despite the law saying unequivocally that firing a worker for organizing a union is illegal. So why does it happen so often?

First is that, as Wilma Lieb says in the article, it’s really hard to prove that a worker was fired because of union activity. Most workers break the rules routinely. Most workplaces only function because of this rule breaking. (That’s why work to rule is an effective strategy.)

So bosses can easily gin up a pretext for firing a worker, and there’s little to be done. But wait, there’s more!

When a boss fires a worker illegally, what's the remedy? The company has "make the worker whole." That is, they must rehire the worker and give them back pay--minus whatever the worker has earned in the meantime.

That is: no fines, no punishment. Just making the worker whole. The cost of firing someone illegally is so little that it's just a cost of doing business. Companies can do it and if it gets litigated and they lose, they'll pay back some money and shrug.

And the process of deciding whether a firing was illegal (that is, whether the employer committed an unfair labor practice) can take years. And in the meantime--even if the boss loses those years later--they've disrupted the union drive.

In short, bosses break the law and fire the people organizing unions because it's easy to get away with, because if they don't get away with it the penalty is very low, and because it works to bust the union.

Which is to say: labor law is broken. One way to fix this is to create management-side injunctive relief. That is workers who get fired for union activities should be able to go to a court, get a decision, and impose daily fines on bosses who delay in rehiring them.

An aside: firing a worker for organizing a union is illegal in the same way that being an "illegal immigrant" is illegal. That is, it's a civil violation, not a criminal one. Yet when you do the first, you can get exiled from your community. When you do the latter--nothing.

This is a good point. Labor law has gotten worse as time has gone on, and it could get better even without congressional action.

https://twitter.com/Ess_Dog/status/1491161174645166080?s=20&t=2XrAezd6W0DE76ui48ztzQ

An important correction to my first tweet in this thread. I'm wrong about @KBronfenbrenner's findings. There are firings in 30% of union drives, not more than half. A third is still way too many, but it's not more than half! I regret the error.