You will not see much coverage about this on the evening news, but if you search the internet for the terms Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) (H.R.1409, S. 560) many of the top or paid links are those of anti-union groups and conservative think tanks.
Of course large corporations don’t want organized labor in the workplace and will use these millions and billions of dollars to fight against it in hopes of squeezing even more profits from every dollar, regardless of the costs to the employees or the environment.
Companies such as Wal-Mart are waging even more strong armed anti-union smear campaigns. I spoke to one Wal-Mart employee and according to her their tactics are working. She stated that a number of employees are under the impression that a union would not help them and would cost them money, with all the union dues they are looking to collect. The misinformation is running rampant.
The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) is trying to organize workers at Wal-Mart and according to the facts average union dues can range anywhere from $200-$500 a year depending on the industry, the union, and/or the amount of money the average union member takes home. While union members earn much more than comparable nonunion workers. The added pay and benefits workers receive through belonging to the union are, on average, 18 times more than the cost of union dues.
Wal-Mart like most anti-union establishments has taken to having its employees watch mandatory videos that promote an anti-union stance, the have had supervisors make sure that every employee has read memos presenting very anti-union view points. These are other similar practices are being used to intimidate and confuse employees into thinking that unions are not in their best interest.
Some quick facts about Wal-Mart
* Wal-Mart is the world’s largest retailer. It is the largest corporation and private employer in the United States.
* Wal-Mart is the biggest employer in 25 states. They set the standard for wages and labor practices.
* Wal-Mart employs 1.4 million workers worldwide and over 1 million in the United States. More than half of Wal-Mart’s U.S. employees leave the company each year.
* Wal-Mart has more than 3,000 stores in the US and almost 1,300 International operations.
* The Walton family is worth about $102 billion.
* Wal-Mart topped the Fortune 500 list of America’s largest corporations ranked by sales for the fourth year in a row.
* Wal-Mart is the top U.S. seller of products ranging from dog food to diamonds with sales of $244.5 billion in the fiscal year ended January 2003 up from $220 billion in 2001.
* In 1970, the country’s largest employer was General Motors, with 350,000 workers. Overwhelmingly union, they earned $17.50 an hour plus health, pension and vacation benefits and cost-of-living increases. Today, the country’s largest employer is Wal-Mart, with over 1 million US workers. They earn an average hourly wage of $8.00, with no defined benefit pension, and inadequate health care.
* Wal-Mart was sued 4,851 times in 2000––or about once every 2 hours, every day of the year. Wal-Mart lawyers list about 9,400 open cases,” according to a report published in the August 14, 2001, USA Today newspaper.
* Wal-Mart plans to open only 15 to 20 of the traditional food-and-drug combo stores in 2003, down from previous projections of 20 to 25 outlets. It will open 210 supercenters, the high end of its previous development range for that format.
Wal-Mart being anti-union is bad for other unionized workers, for example in 2004 when 70,000 grocery workers went on strike and were locked out for four and a half months, three of the most profitable companies in the industry used Wal-Mart as their chief leveraging point, while effectively eliminating health care for their employees. Safeway, Kroger, and Albertsons which control 61% of the grocery market in Southern California and who saw their combined profits some 91% in the five years leading up to the strike demanded their workers to sacrifice their health care benefits, to “compete” with Wal-Mart. The reality is they used this phantom as a ploy to weaken the union workers benefits and increase their profits even more.
As of 2008 only 7.6 % of the private sector was unionized. Labor’s lack of power is a major reason why, while corporate profits are setting records quarter over quarter. While employee real median incomes have stagnated and fewer workers received health care coverage from employers. Decades of anti-labor decisions by the National Labor Relations Board have played a very significant role, undermining employees’ rights through weak enforcement of labor laws.
As a result corporations feel as they have more leeway to get away with such illegal anti-union tactics as regularly engaging in surveillance, intimidation and harassment of employees trying to organize. A recent study by professor Kate Bronfenbrenner of Cornell University showed that more than half of employers fighting against union organization drives illegally threaten to close down their facility if the union wins, while one in three companies illegally fire workers for union activity. Today, supporting a union at work poses a major threat of getting fired.
America needs unions, we need to fight and organize! In the 1950s, more than a third of American workers held a union card. They were able to organize and negotiate for higher wages and better working conditions, unions transformed the labor environment, providing the economic mobility that enabled working people to enjoy a middle-class standard of living. Without unions we would not have overtime pay, workers’ compensation, and health care. Today union jobs still offer higher pay and better benefits than non-union jobs. In industries where union density is high, unions continue to set the standard, lifting wages and improving working conditions even for employees who are not union members.
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