Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Interesting Take on EFCA

Labor Notes:

Sandy Pope heads a local of dozens of small Teamster shops around New York City. Unlike most, she’s not sorry card check won’t be part of EFCA. Pope says card check could make it almost too easy to get recognition: “It would allow people to hide from taking responsibility for getting the union in, and then when there’s a fight to get a good contract, you don’t have a group that’s battle-tested at all, there’s no group cohesion, no momentum.”

Wouldn’t EFCA’s provision for arbitration of first contracts take care of that? Pope explodes, “That’s another way to avoid going through organizing the workers! ‘Let’s make this legalistic so we don’t have to talk to the peons at all.’ I want to have to do that part. I just don’t want people to get fired.”

To that end, Pope and others strongly back the EFCA provision for injunctions to put illegally fired union supporters back to work. And she’d like to see a new clause now floated by Washington negotiators: expedited elections.

A short election period is valuable, she says, because the organizing committee can hang on without getting disheartened. Her method is to organize the vast majority of the workforce to visit the boss as a group and demand recognition. If that won’t fly, they seek an election on the spot or the next week.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's one thing to say we can survive if an EFCA bill comes out without a card check.

For a union leader to claim it is better that way is dopey.

Making it harder to get collective bargaining rather than easier? That this is somehow better for the unorganized?

Crazy.

Tom Hoffman said...

Well... I see her point if you're trying to build a fighting, democratic union. Whether or not she's right, I don't know.