Unions Can’t Just Be About What We’re Allowed to Do: Social Justice Unionism

Reblogged from GADFLYONTHEWALLBLOG

If labor unions were an animal, they’d be an old hound dog napping on the porch.

They’re slow to get up and chase away burglars but they do like to howl at night.

Most of the time you don’t even know they’re around until the dinner bell rings. Then that ancient mutt is first to bolt into the kitchen to find a place at the table.

It’s kind of sad really. That faithful old dog used to be really something in his youth.

He was fierce! He’d bark at trespassers even tearing them apart if they threatened his patch of land.

Old Uncle Sam used to yell at him and even threaten the pooch with a rolled up newspaper, but that dog didn’t care. He had a sense of right and wrong, and he didn’t mind getting into deep trouble fighting for what he thought was fair.

Today, however, the only thing that really riles him is if you threaten to take away his ratty old bone.

Let’s face it. Unions have become kind of tame. They’re housebroken and not much of a threat to those people waiting in the shadows to rob us blind.

Some people say we’d be better off without them. But I don’t agree. Even a decrepit canine can act as a deterrent, and thieves sure are frightened of dogs.

Think about all unions have given us: the weekend, child labor laws, vacation time, pensions, lunch breaks, healthcare, the 8-hour day, maternity leave, safety measures, due process, sick leave and free speech protections on the job!

They didn’t get us all that by sitting politely at the table with their hands crossed.

Read more>>

Workers, lawyers, NLRB team up to expose Menard’s union busting

Reblogged from People’s World

David versus Goliath comparisons leap to the journalist’s pen whenever an average person fights for rights against the controlling richest .01 percent. It’s a popular truism. But sometimes it’s dead right. Such is the case of an unknown union organizer who likes to work computer and phone out of a coffee shop near his Manhattan home in a state that doesn’t even have one of John Menard Jr.’s 280 Big Box home improvement stores.

In the Midwest – stretching from the Dakotas to Michigan with headquarters in Eau Claire, Wis., – the 76-year-old John Menard Jr. has risen to what Forbes labels the richest person in Wisconsin (personal wealth $8.6 billion) largely based on hatred of workers’ rights and union organizing. Read more>>

Target, Which Hates Unions, Gets Its First Union

Reblogged from GAWKER

A tiny group of Target employees in Brooklyn have pulled off what no Target employees ever have before: they’ve formed a union.

Target has been around for more than 50 years. It has nearly 350,000 employees and 1,800 U.S. stores. Yet it has never had a union in any of those stores in its entire history. (As you might expect, that is because it is a voracious and committed anti-union corporation from the top down.) That, despite the fact that Target employees have told us in sordid detail about the sort of poor pay and sh*tty working conditions that would make the company ripe for organizing.

The last serious Target union drive came in 2011 at a store in Valley Stream, NY. The union was voted down after a contentious campaign, amid charges of company misconduct.

But now, hot damn, right underneath everyone’s noses, a group of nine Target pharmacy workers have voted 7-2 to unionize with the UFCW. Read more>>

Home Depot and Unions

Reblogged from DAILY KOS

I took a job at Home Depot and was made to watch their various training videos. At one point, they start off one that sounds fairly innocuous. It’s called something like “The Value of Your Signature”. It quickly descends into anti-union rhetoric.

I saw a variation of the one above. All of the actors are the same, the main difference is the guy who introduces all of it — I assume they update the video with whoever is in charge at the time.

Frankly, I was amazed by the video and had to stifle myself from guffawing or commenting. I have no idea how anyone else in the room felt about it.

You can watch it for yourself, but the general idea is that unions are “outsiders” (their words, they use this terminology constantly) who don’t get Home Depot’s “culture” and apparently go to great strides to infiltrate it. Read more>>

Lowe’s Anti-Union Video is Bad. Really Bad.

Reblogged from Labor 411

When watching the first eight minutes of the video below made for Lowe’s store managers, I thought, “nothing looks too bad so far.” But, as with virtually all corporate videos on unions, things get ugly and distorted quickly.

Starting at the 8:00 mark, Lowe’s states that “no matter how they might portray themselves, unions are a business.” You know, because businesses are democratically elected non-profit organization that are created by workers for the purposes of collective bargaining [/sarcasm].

The b.s. continues with the video claiming that “whatever problem an employee has, the organizer’s job is to point out that the union has a solution.”

Finish reading and watch the video>>