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Jan 19, 2012

CWA has asked the National Labor Relations Board to throw out a narrow Jan. 6 union election loss for 13 workers at a Verizon Wireless facility in Bloomington, Ill., charging that the company repeatedly violated the law to ensure the vote would go its way.

Widespread support existed for a union last November when the retail sales workers and customer service representatives contacted CWA to assist them in organizing. When workers petitioned for an election, 76 percent supported the union. By the time the election was held two months later, the vote was 7-6 against the union, a result of the company's illegal tactics.

With cheaper U.S. Labor

Did we make it to the bottom?  Well, we must be close.  Close enough that U.S. industrial giant Caterpillar has locked out workers at the Electro-Motive Diesel plant in London, Ontario and threatened a permanent closing and moving of the plant to Muncie, IN where workers earn less.

Would we like to have those jobs?  Hell, yes!  But I get a belly ache when I realize that they (the capitalists) are playing us against our brothers and sisters in Canada.  We’re being used in the same way they played the cheaper labor game to move jobs out of the U.S.

The best way to cow a population is starvation.  Take away the work for a few years and let desperation set in.  Then, when we’re not so high and mighty, they trust that we’d turn our backs on our fellow workers and be grateful.  They’re treating us like dogs fighting for scraps under the table.

This is an insult to Canadian and U.S. labor, as well as world labor.  It’s an old game that we should fight against, and it won’t stop until it doesn’t work for them anymore.  It’s well known that corporations don’t have national pride, in any country or its people.  Boeing recently settled an NLRB lawsuit regarding allegations that the aircraft maker illegally shifted work from union plants in Washington state to a new non-union factory in South Carolina.  It’s the same game played with citizen against citizen.

We can only defeat these practices by organizing.  “When the baby’s sleeping, everything is OK.  But, when the baby cries…” –Randi Rhodes.  People all over America are waking up to realize the dirty tricks that have been played against them.

We can’t let corporate power use our desperation to drive a wedge between us, our Canadian counterparts or any of our brothers and sisters in the rest of the world.

Together we win, Solidarity.