Listen Here, Senators!
Workers have been meeting with Democratic Presidential candidates to describe their struggles against union-busting employers.
By Clyde Weiss
A one-on-one meeting with a candidate for President of the United States isn't something that Chris Ayala or Harriet Taylor thought they would ever take part in. But in two separate meetings this July, the two workers — each trying to organize a union with AFSCME — had precisely that experience.
The subject: harassment, intimidation and interference by employers when they became involved in organizing campaigns. Ayala, Taylor and other workers told the candidates about the high hurdles they must clear to achieve respect and dignity on the job.
Although having a union is for most workers a legal right in this country, many employers do everything they can to keep workers from organizing. To put a human face on this critical dilemma and help make it an issue in the 2004 election campaign, the AFL-CIO offered the nine Democratic candidates for President an opportunity to meet with small groups of workers from around the country who have been subjected to union-busting employers.
THE FEAR FACTOR. Ayala and six other workers for various Northeastern employers sat at a round table in a New York City hotel room. Each told his or her story to U.S. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.). Ayala began by describing his job as an administrative assistant at a not-for-profit, autistic care facility in Queens, N.Y., Quality Care for the Autism Community.
Partly because he has an autistic brother, Ayala worked hard to earn the respect of management. He succeeded — becoming executive assistant to the CEO and even "Employee of the Quarter." But once he began to organize a union with the Civil Service Employees Association/AFSCME Local 1000, he was suspended. "All of a sudden, I'm the worst employee they had," he said.
Ayala had grown concerned about employee abuses and the poor quality of patient care he witnessed: chronic short-staffing, minimal training, transfers on short-notice and failure to pay overtime. He even had a pay cut for no reason. In January, he had begun working to build a union. "I was pretty afraid," he said since two other union activists had been fired.
Kerry began digging for details. "Was there an election date?" No, said Ayala, "We were asking for a 'card-check election.'""Did the company agree to that?" No — "but that's the only way the employees can have a voice."
The senator kept up his questioning until Ayala got to his bottom line: Would Kerry intercede on their behalf to pressure city officials to meet with the workers? They feared, he explained, that $200,000 the city had budgeted for the company could end up in the pockets of union-busting consultants.
"OK," said Kerry, "there may be some way for me to help, to put some heat on it." Later, he told the meeting participants: "It takes a lot of courage to do what each of you have done. I want every one in America to hear these stories."
FIGHTING FOR RESPECT. The first of her group to address Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.), Chicago home care worker Harriet Taylor, RN, described the union-busting efforts of her employer, Resurrection Health Care. The second-largest health care provider in Chicago, Resurrection employs some 14,000 workers in eight hospitals and nursing homes. Nurses and other Resurrection workers are currently organizing with Council 31. (See related story)
This is the second time Taylor and her colleagues have been through an organizing campaign, she told Edwards. The last effort began with strong worker support, but ultimately failed by a mere seven votes after management hired anti-union consultants to intimidate employees. Resurrection retained a former nurse — "basically a consultant paid thousands of dollars to mislead us," Taylor said — to speak with the workers about why unions are bad. "And she's back again."
Resurrection's managers, she related, had even reached into the workers' mail boxes — mail is often the only way they can communicate with one another — and removed union flyers. In one instance, a human-resources director approached a worker "while she was getting her mail, took it right out of her hand and sifted through it," removing anything related to organizing a union. Managers have also ordered workers into their offices and threatened them.
"They have created an environment where we are afraid to talk to each other on the job unless there is no management around," Taylor said. "We need a President who supports real labor-law reforms." Looking Edwards in the eye, she then asked the senator to publicly endorse their organizing efforts during an upcoming Presidential forum in Chicago; that, she explained later, "would take away some of the fear" of working to build a union.
"Absolutely," Edwards promised. Like Kerry, he said that telling such stories is crucial to helping lawmakers understand the difficulties workers face when organizing. He noted that he was working "right now" on legislation to impose "serious penalties" on violators of labor laws. "Card-check neutrality needs to be the law of the land," Edwards declared, adding: "The American people have no idea this is going on — unless they've been in an organizing campaign."
After meeting the candidates, Taylor and Ayala said they were impressed that the senators had expressed such interest in their struggles. "There should be more meetings like this," said Ayala. "The more light shed on these issues, the better. I'm very excited right now. It's going to give me a little extra push to do what I can" to promote organizing.
