(The following article by Diane E. Lewis was posted on the Boston Globe website on December 3.)
BOSTON — Labor leaders around the country will hold a day of protest next week in response to US employers’ increased resistance to union organizing efforts, AFL-CIO president John Sweeney said yesterday.
The 13-million-member union federation is also supporting proposed legislation to make it easier for workers to join unions.
“This year 500,000 Americans exercised their right to form unions, but another 42 million wanted to and didn’t get the chance,” Sweeney said in a meeting with the Boston Globe’s editorial board. “Because of efforts to deny them the right to unionize, many workers are being fired, demoted, and intimidated.”
Thousands of unionized workers are expected to participate next week, including 5,000 in Massachusetts who will march from the State House to the Thomas P. O’Neill Federal Building downtown before rallying on Boston Common Wednesday afternoon. The AFL-CIO intends to use the protests as a springboard for efforts to educate workers and force political candidates to pay closer attention to workers’ needs, Sweeney said.
Labor specialists said companies have stepped up their resistance to union organizing or wage demands in recent years. Kate Bronfenbrenner, a labor professor at Cornell University, said 25 percent of employers fire at least one worker for union activity each year and 51 percent threaten to close factories or plants if workers elect a union to represent them.
Business leaders attribute companies’ negative reaction to union organizing to intense competition from nonunion foreign and domestic competitors and the need to rein in costs. Flexibility also plays a role: Companies complain of being chained to work rules. Additionally, business specialists say, unionized companies are at a competitive disadvantage because they have less flexibility than their nonunion rivals.
Andre Mayer, president of the New England Economic Project, a nonpartisan research group, said: “In some cases, flexibility may mean the inability to lay off periodically. It may also mean not being constrained by work rules and staffing agreements. Obviously, when companies are under pressure, they may be more reluctant to put themselves in a situation where they cannot manage the business as flexibly as possible.”
In interviews yesterday, union organizers said a number of Massachusetts workers have been threatened with termination, or have lost jobs because they lobbied for a union or a labor contract.
Carol Knox, subregional director of United Auto Workers Union region 9-A, said workers at Saint-Gobain Abrasives in Worcester, formerly Norton Co., were routinely intimidated before they voted to join the union in the summer of 2001.
“During the election, numerous supervisors and managers made threats that the plant would close if people voted in a union and workers were also told they would lose benefits and their jobs,” said Knox.
Dottie Wackerman, vice president of communications for Saint-Gobain Abrasives, said the company made a significant effort to negotiate in good faith and did not retaliate against employees. “We began negotiating in February 2002,” Wackerman said. “We have met more than 100 times, and we now have 60 to 70 tentative agreements. We have made progress.”
The company has 1,700 workers at its Greendale site in Worcester. About 45 percent are now represented by the UAW.
Last week, Democrats introduced a union-backed bill that would permit workers to establish a union through a card-check system instead of union election. Under card-check, organizers distribute union cards and workers who want to join sign them. Introduced by Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and US Representative George Miller of California, both Democrats, the bill would require that any disagreement arising during negotiations for the first proposed contract would be resolved by an arbitrator. The bill would also toughen penalties against employers.