Thuggery abounds in hypocritical union organizing bids, Mobile Register (Alabama)

[Omaha Steve]

NO link. Could somebody find it and post it?

Copyright 2007 The Mobile Press Register Inc.
All Rights Reserved

Mobile Register (Alabama)
April 1, 2007 Sunday

Thuggery abounds in hypocritical union organizing bids

By ap

NEW YORK - "Count all the votes!" Democrats screamed during the 2000 Florida recount fiasco. "Don't count the votes!" Democrats now yell when workers decide whether to unionize.

The Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee heard testimony Tuesday on the sarcastically titled Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). Adopted March 1 by the House, 241-185, it would let unions capture workplaces without having to win secret-ballot elections. Instead, work sites could go union once representatives collect non-secret authorization cards from a majority of workers. Why spurn federally supervised labor elections? As United Food and Commercial Workers President Joe Hansen admits: "We can't win that way anymore. "

Beyond vote suppression, other union card-check tactics seem stolen from a Martin Scorsese picture.

"I left this line of work because I became revolted by the ugly methods that we were encouraged to use to pressure employees into union ranks," former United Steelworkers organizer Richard Torres wrote in a Feb. 8 account to the House Education and Labor Committee. "I ultimately quit," Torres continued, when a senior unionist "asked me to threaten migrant workers by telling them they would be reported to federal immigration officials if they refused to sign check-off cards."

The union, Torres added, encouraged supportive employees to "go as far as bringing us the garbage from the offices so that union organizers could sift through it to find any dirt on someone in management or the company that (later) could be used to discredit them ..."

In Philadelphia last August, federal Judge Stewart Dalzell ruled that the UNITE textile union "violated Drivers Privacy Protection Act (DPPA) by recording license plate numbers in employee parking lot and using them to obtain employees' addresses from motor vehicle records." Dalzell determined that UNITE agents employed Westlaw's legal database to link license plates to home addresses. UNITE used "private investigators or information brokers," Dalzell indicated. Also, "Some organizers followed workers home to get addresses."

FULL story once we find a link.

[54anickel]

1. Here's one

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=20047

I found it linked at this site (for what it's worth)
http://union-free.blogspot.com/search/label/Election%20'08 The Union-Free Employer

Union Busting is big business these days, quite creative in some of their marketing too. :eyes:

[papau]

2. What lies- what amazing misinformation - and why can't unions contact workers to see if they want a

union - why do they need addresses denied them by management?

That is one sick article.

[Solo_in_MD]

3. It how they got the home address information

IIRC, the union is not supposed to contact potential members outside of work unless they give permission in and opt in, vice opt out fashion