UNITED ELECTRICAL WORKERS HIGHLIGHT
GOVT.-BACKED UNION-BUSTING TACTICS

Highlighting the anti-worker GOP Bush regime’s role in what one marcher called government-backed union-busting, dozens of members of the independent United Electrical Workers picketed a federal Citizenship and Immigration Service subcontractor in Arlington, Va., on April 28.

Marchers from 40 UE locals in 15 states paraded in front of the office building housing the corporate headquarters of Stanley, Inc. They noted that--despite federal law--Bush’s agency stood by and did nothing while Stanley violated workers’ rights.

Stanley’s union-busting, sometimes carried out through its subcontractors, hasn’t stopped UE from racking up a string of recognition election wins in 2008 at facilities the firm or its subcontractors run for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service in St. Albans, Vt., and Laguna Niguel, Calif. The votes cover some 700 workers nationwide.

So Stanley, again with the Bush government looking on and doing nothing, is now refusing to bargain with UE for first contracts. That combination brought the protesters, in town for UE’s legislative conference, out during a rainy noon lunch hour to picket in front of Stanley’s headquarters.

“Stanley holds the contract with the government” and the workers toil in a government-owned building, explained Franki Hayes of UE Local 208 in St. Albans. Because it’s a federal building, she added, workers are legally not banned from talking about their pay while on the job. But Stanley banned such discussion and the Bush agency backed them up. “That’s union-busting,” Hayes added.

Stanley, which receives taxpayer dollars for its services, also engaged in other classic anti-union tactics at both St. Albans and Laguna Niguel, said Hayes and California worker Adam Chacon. They included intimidating 1-on-1 4-hour meetings between workers and supervisors “with guards posted at the closed doors.” That sent a clearly intimidating message to other workers, both noted.

Pro-union workers’ pay was cut by up to one-third, while others were given raises and preferences for overtime--tactics that break labor law--and pro-union workers were even denied bereavement leave during the UE’s organizing drive.

It didn’t work. UE won all the elections held so far but one, in a relatively small unit. So Stanley has turned to stalling, refusing to negotiate first contracts.

That led UE to send a delegation upstairs with a letter for Stanley CEO Philip O. Nolan while the rest of the workers picketed outside in the rain. The letter called on Nolan “to demonstrate respect for workers’ rights and move towards resolution of management and morale problems” in St. Albans and Laguna Niguel.

Specifically, UE wants Stanley to start bargaining, engage in coordinated bargaining covering all the unionized workers on both coasts and “abandon the low-road union-busting behavior it used” during the organizing drive “and instead join UE in a good-faith, intensive effort to reach a collective agreement.”

There was no response from Stanley.