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Feature
Story (continued) |
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Conversation
with
Libby Devlin
Organizing
Director, SEIU 285 (MA) |
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| Free
to Speak ... Assemble ... Organize |
My union recently had two campaigns where a
large majority of workers wanted to organize. In both cases,
we filed for an election with the NLRB, and in both cases the
employers broke the law during the campaign. We lost both
elections by very narrow votes. And then we filed objections
to the employer’s conduct.
The NLRB overturned the results of both
elections. And what’s the remedy? Rerun the elections. That
helps! The employer effectively destroys people’s ability to
organize the union, and the NLRB’s remedy is — do it
again.
One of the campaigns was at a Catholic
hospital in Boston. They used intimidation, interrogation,
surveillance — all the usual things. The vote was in
April. We are still waiting for a decision from the NLRB on
the employer’s appeal. No new election has been scheduled.
The workers there are terrific. They continue to have meetings
and file grievances. But whenever they talk to the employer
about problems that come up, the employer says, "We have
absolutely no obligation to talk to you." It’s crazy!
WORKERS WANT A VOICE
The other campaign was at a nursing home.
Here, the employer threatened people that the nursing home
might close, that workers would have to go on strike if they
joined the union, that it was completely futile to join the
union.
The workforce is primarily Haitian-American.
Staffing levels are horrendous and as a result, the residents
don’t receive the care they should. In spite of the low pay,
people take a lot of pride in the work they do. When you’re
low-paid and you can’t give good care to people you really
care about, it becomes very frustrating. And that’s a lot of
what prompted the organizing.
The amazing thing is that in spite of the fact
that it’s hard, workers still want a voice on the job and to
have some power where they work. So they continue to figure it
out, to build, to organize.
CAN WE DO THIS?
We have a jar in our office called the
"Can they do that?" jar. Every time someone asks the
question, they have to pay a quarter. It’s a fairly common
question. A boss does something, and the organizing committee,
the workers, the organizers all say, "Can they do
that?" And usually the answer is "yes."
The paper on "Toward
a New Labor Law" gave me tremendous hope that maybe
there is a way that you don’t have to leave the Constitution
at the door when you go to work. I read it and thought, if we
could actually do this, things would really change. And I
immediately leapt to, How do we do this? I guess that may be
putting the cart before the horse. We have to figure out if it
can work and how we can get a lot of people to work on making
it happen.
Next: A Conversation
with Leanna Noble ->
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Jim Pope
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