Charleston Gazette (West Virginia), February 11, 2007, Sunday

Copyright 2007 Charleston Newspapers

Charleston Gazette (West Virginia)

February 11, 2007, Sunday

SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. P1E

HEADLINE: Family unfriendly;

American workers are too intimidated to join unions

BYLINE: Rick Wilson

BODY:

Something strange is happening in the American workplace. The percentage of U.S. workers who belong to unions declined from 12.5 percent to 12 percent last year.

That in itself is no surprise as good jobs continue to be a major U.S. export, thanks in part to bad trade deals that create a global race to the bottom.

The weird part is that polling data from samples conducted in December 2006 by Peter D. Hart Research Associates indicated that 60 million U.S. workers would join a union if they could.

Sixty million would get those percentage figures heading north again. And it would help promote shared prosperity and give the currently squeezed middle class some breathing room.

By the numbers, union members earn about 30 percent more per week than non-union workers. (Broken down, it's 31 percent more for women, 36 percent more for African Americans and 46 percent more for Latinos.)

Eighty percent of union members have employer-provided health insurance, compared with 49 percent of nonunion workers. Nearly 70 percent have defined benefit pensions, compared with about 14 percent of nonunion workers. Union members tend to have more days of paid vacation and short-term disability benefits as well.

Those are the kind of things that promote stable families and communities.

So what's keeping people from joining? In a few words, the answer is intimidation, retaliation and threats.

A survey of National Labor Relations Board election campaigns conducted by Kate Bronfenbrenner of Cornell University conducted in 1998 and 1999 found that private sector employers illegally fire workers for union activity in at least 25 percent of all organizing drives.

Firing or the threat of it is the most serious kind of intimidation. Other forms include forced meetings, threats to close, discipline, etc. In the Bronfenbrenner study, employers force workers to attend anti-union group presentations in 92 percent of all campaigns and half threaten to completely or partially shut down.

Last fall, Brent Garren, a senior associate counsel for UNITE HERE told a congressional subcommittee last September that 79 percent of workers agreed workers are "very" or "somewhat" likely to be fired for trying to form a union.

More recently, the Center for Economic and Policy Research found a steep rise in illegal firings since the year 2000 in relation to the last half of the 1990s. Often, these firings are not random. Rather, they tend to target workers who stick out their proverbial necks to organize.

According to the Center, "By 2005, pro-union workers involved in union election campaigns faced about a 1.8 percent chance of being illegally fired during the course of the campaign. If we assume that employers target union organizers and activists, and that union organizers and activists make up about 10 percent of pro-union workers, our estimates suggest that almost one-in-five union organizers or activists can expect to be fired as a result of their activities in a union election campaign."

Many fired workers don't bother seeking justice through the NLRB, where the wait is long and the gains are few.

There is a remedy now being considered by Congress. The Employee Free Choice Act, which has about 230 co-sponsors from both parties in the House, would establish stronger penalties for companies that violate workers' rights when they seek to organize, provide mediation and arbitration for first-contract disputes, and allow employees to join unions by signing cards authorizing the union to represent them.

Many religious traditions support the right of workers to form unions and have issued strong statements to that effect. My favorite is from "Economic Justice for All," a pastoral letter of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (1986) which states that "No one may deny the right to organize without attacking human dignity itself."

In 2005, a number of Nobel Peace Prize laureates, including the Dalai Lama, the Rev. Desmond Tutu, former Polish Solidarity leader Lech Walesa and former President Jimmy Carter, issued a statement calling on every nation, including this one, to "truly protect and defend workers' rights, including the right to form unions and bargain collectively."

Restoring the right of workers to organize would go a long way toward restoring the balance in this country and helping to create an economy that works for everyone.

Wilson is director of the WV Economic Justice Project and publishes The Goat Rope, a daily public affairs blog: www.goatrope.blogspot.com.