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This past Thursday I joined members of Food AND Medicine, the Eastern Maine Labor Council, University of Maine’s Wildcat Student Labor Action Project (Wildcat SLAP) and other community activists in an action at Rite Aid in Bangor. This was a national effort in solidarity with the Rite Aid warehouse workers of Lancaster, California.
Last May, after a two-year battle, those workers earned recognition of their union, International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local #26. The workers were driven to organize in response to working mandatory overtime – after already working ten-hour shifts – ever-increasing production quotas, at-will employment threatening their job security and the absence of air conditioning during the scorching high desert summers. The extreme heat, consistently greater than 100 degrees at the height of summer, has caused weakness, cramps, fainting, vomiting and in one case, a seizure resulting in death.
The workers’ union was finally recognized after the National Labor Relations Board cited Rite Aid management for 49 labor law violations. The workers were disciplined, demoted, threatened, suspended and fired for being pro-union. In order to avoid penalties, management settled and rather than pay fines, merely had to post a notice on their bulletin board apologizing while simultaneously claiming innocence from any wrongdoing.
To this day, ILWU Local #26 workers have not been able to sign a contract with their employer. The management has only entered surface negotiations, so far only completing the all-important decision regarding the location of the union’s bulletin board. Though the recognition of their union does empower and promote solidarity among the workers, it is through contract negotiations that those workers can collectively bargain for wages, benefits, job security and better working conditions. After their long-fought and on-going struggle, these workers deserve contract negotiations in good faith by management.
This case demonstrates the impotence of current labor law. What’s worse is that this is not an extreme example, but the status quo. Workers in organizing drives face intimidation every day, and even when employers do break the law, they are rarely held responsible for their actions.
There is a piece of labor legislation in Congress that seeks to even this power imbalance: The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). If the EFCA were in place for the Lancaster workers’ struggle, those workers would have had their union recognized and contract negotiated years ago. The EFCA simplifies union recognition by holding only one election, rather than the two elections held now, which includes a period between in which employers use coercive tactics much like Rite Aid did. In addition, if a contract is not negotiated within 90 days of recognition, the EFCA requires first contract arbitration. Lastly, Rite Aid’s violations would receive more than the insignificant punishment they received, with the EFCA stiffening penalties for such violations.
We deserve just compensation for our work. As our wages stagnate, Food AND Medicine reports in “Where Are They Now,” that the CEO’s average salary has soared from 24 times the average worker’s pay, to 344 times over the past 25 years.
This Monday, April 6 at 6 p.m. in DPC 100, Barbera Ehrenreich will discuss the EFCA’s potential to pull the workers of this nation, from this economic crisis.
Peter Janarelli is co-chair of Wildcat SLAP.
