In My Opinion: Another Way to Winning Workers' Rights

Polling by the AFL-CIO consistently shows that most workers by far would prefer to work under a union contract. Yet unions win only 51 percent of representation elections conducted by the National Labor Relations Board each year. What's going on?

Consider this: half a century ago, unions prevailed in about 80 percent of the elections held each year. That's when the NLRB still considered its mission to balance the enormous coercive power of the employer by setting - and enforcing - fair election rules.

Things are very different today.

But most Americans don't know what's happening in our workplaces. Public opinion polls show that 74 percent of the public believes that employees should be free to make their own choice about forming a union without management interference, and nearly 100 percent disapproves of firings or harassment as a way to stop workers from exercising their rights to organize.

Three-quarters of the public also objects to management forcing workers to attend anti-union meetings at work and to attempts by supervisors to influence an employee's decision about unionizing.

Yet working people routinely endure harassment and intimidation from employers, all because the system of labor laws once intended to protect workers' rights is stacked against them. We remember too well the travesty of Sprint Corp.'s La Conexion Familiar. Sprint was never fined for its abuse of some 200 mostly Hispanic women workers who lost their jobs when Sprint shut down the facility rather than accept that workers would vote for CWA representation. The "remedy" ordered by the court: Sprint should send the workers, who now had no jobs, a letter saying the company would not in the future violate their rights to organize.

Sadly, such tactics are the rule in most organizing campaigns today. In fact, union-busting and union avoidance have become a big business and the first course of action by employers whenever workers try to gain a real voice, according to research by Kate Bronfenbrenner of Cornell University and Paul Weiler of Harvard University. Among their findings:

At least 10,000 workers are fired each year - in nearly a third of all organizing campaigns - for exercising their rights to form and join a union.

Ninety-one percent of employers force workers to attend closed-door meetings to hear anti-union propaganda; 80 percent require immediate supervisors to attend training sessions on how to attack unions; and 79 percent have supervisors deliver anti-union messages to employees.

Eighty percent of employers hired outside consultants to run anti-union campaigns, and more than half of all employers threaten to shut down if employees decide to form a union.

This means that we have to work harder and in innovative ways to help workers gain the representation they want.

That's why in CWA, "bargaining to organize" has been our focus for more than 10 years. It has taken hard work and a multi-year strategy, but by negotiating card-check recognition, some 4,000 workers at SBC Wireless alone have gained a union voice. Just this year, 400 workers at Pacific Bell Wireless joined CWA through organizing and card check recognition.

This strategy has spread across our union. In Buffalo, N.Y., CWA nurses have negotiated a unique card-check agreement that already has brought representation to 800, with another 1,200 potential new members. Some 250 professional and support staff at Bell Atlantic Directory Graphics in Pennsylvania also joined CWA this year as a result of card-check recognition won in bargaining with Bell Atlantic. Following this strategy doesn't mean organizing comes easy. It takes hard work on the part of many - workers, organizers, local union volunteers and CWA staff - to make it happen.

Community organizing and workers' rights boards are another way we're building support for a union voice. CWA joined the AFL-CIO's "Seven Days in June" campaign, intended to spotlight those employers who are trying to deny workers their right to organize. The labor movement believes that restoring workers' rights to organize will take the hard work not only of our members, but of our communities as well. That's why the workers' rights boards, which draw from the religious, civic, political and civil rights groups that make up our communities, are so effective in putting pressure on hard-headed employers.

Clearly, we need reform of our labor laws. But realistically, the current crowd in Congress will keep this from happening. That's why we're exploring and following new avenues to defend and expand workers' rights.

There is one more thing we can do. We've endorsed a candidate for President of the United States - Vice President Al Gore - who will be the first since Franklin Delano Roosevelt to publicly and vigorously endorse workers' rights to organize. We can work hard to elect the kind of President - and Congress - who recognize workers' rights.