UPDATE: So I went and talked with the HR people at my new job, and thank my lucky stars, it is a unionized job! My luck is greater than I initially thought. Thanks to all of you for your support.
Today's WaPo features the latest amount of drivel from George Will, but this one particularly burns me because I have personal experience with the issue.
I just quit my job as a department manager for a Fortune 500 retail chain, because I got a new job at a nearby university. I spent eight years with this particular chain, and my experience directly contradicts Will's typical ideological pabulum.
Follow me after the jump for details.
Will calls today's crap "An Assault on Corporate Speech." The "assault" he is so worked up about is the Employee Free Choice Act, which would "allow unions to organize workplaces without workers voting for unionization in elections with secret ballots. Instead, unions could use the 'card check' system: Once a majority of a company's employees signs a card expressing consent, the union is automatically certified as the bargaining agent for all the workers."
Will finds that this is a way for "dwindling unions," who presumbly are in that state because the wonderful benefits of non-unionization have been realized by most Americans, to bolster membership ranks by "hounding" the workers who checked the cards about membership and dues. He writes:
Unions say the card-check system is needed to protect workers from anti-union pressure by employers before secret-ballot elections. Such supposed pressure is one of organized labor's alibis for declining membership.
There are, however, ample protections against employer pressures that really are abusive. Tellingly, the act would forbid employers from trying to influence -- pressure? -- employees by improving their lot: It would fine employers that, to reduce the incentive to unionize, give workers "unilateral" -- not negotiated -- improvements in compensation or working conditions during attempts at unionization. Clearly, the act aims less to help workers than to herd them as dues-payers into unions.
Will acts as if such pressure doesn't exist. He is sadly mistaken. The pressure began my first day with the company, where the training materials urge you to not unionize, to report anyone who tries to unionize you, and threatens you implicitly if you do participate in unionization attempts. They are demonized over and over again. Employees, therefore, can be made to work overtime, can be kept from taking breaks, and be underpaid for the whole enterprise. Here in California, it took employee lawsuits and the state stepping in and mandating a system for employees to get their protection.
Corporations should take care of their workers regardless, not because they are scared of a union. Will's example proves the point that it's unions that get employees taken care of one way or another.
As far as my job, I'm leaving after eight years, four Employee of the Month awards, and as a department manager, and my take-home pay each month was a lousy $1300, plus bonuses if I could earn them. Let's think over where I ranked, and what I actually made for that work. Retail companies make larger profits, by and large, every single succeeding quarter. Despite this, employee pay is being cut. Raises are being shrunk. Two years ago, I got a nine cent raise despite having been the leading salesperson in the year I was being reviewed on. So I made them a ton of money, and I got nine cents. Yet somehow Will thinks we're being oppressive of corporations. The sheer illogic of it makes me want to burst a blood vessel.
I know George there doesn't escape the fog that envelops Washington much, and that his head is probably swirling with vapors that clog it up and prevent his brain from functioning well, but if he ever got out of it, and checked on something more than having a safe workplace (which retail stores need to be with the public viewing they get), maybe, just maybe he'd see why we need unions.
Read his whole article and ponder the mindset behind it. Workers in this nation have a long way to go.