Smokescreens
From Underdog to Victor

Many times I am reminded about what really happens inside union organizer’s tactical meetings and how sometimes the decisions they make are not based on what’s best for the campaign nor the union or even if they can win the election. Often decisions are based on one of the most fatal flaws unions have in their management structure. For some reason union management does not like to keep its staff too comfortable in their job security. Unions are result driven organizations, especially in the efforts to bring in new members. Unions want organizers concerned about their employment so they will work harder to recruit new membership

As an organizer, your goal is to be a “player” on an international level and receive high-level assignments. To accomplish this goal you have to prove your worth through leadership and results. Bob King of the UAW is a perfect example, he has been passed over for advancements for years because of his lackluster organizing numbers, his lack of political skills haven’t helped him either. Bob has always been on the far left side of the union community. Finally Bob had to toe the line for years to now be the UAW’s president elect.

Sometimes I have to scratch my head when I see what organizers are doing today. Organizers are routinely doing things that would have resulted in immediate termination under my leadership. Today, union leaders organize without a strong internal committee, are being forced to stand outside with flyers to communicate with employees or announce meetings, and are moving forward with campaigns that are sure defeats.

Sometimes unions will stick with election dates just to drain the company financially and withdraw at the last moment. Sometimes unions will overplay their hand and try to strike for recognition when they don’t have the support internally. Unions know that such tactics will scar the management/employee relationship because of the cause and effect reasons behind organizing campaigns; usually the relationship is so damaged between management and employees that it is impossible to gauge the emotions within or even trust the information you do receive.

In my opinion, the unions are sometimes making smart moves for themselves. Unions are looking to collect higher percentages of cards, they are using “union leave clauses” to fortify their house calling teams, and using psychology tactics to throw the company into a panic and over react to actions on the ground.

The unions are confident that changes within the NLRB and Labor Department are going give them more leverage in organizing campaigns. One can expect that they will be filing more ULPs in the near future. Unions now have a direct line of communication to the NLRB in Washington D.C.

When I was an Organizing Director we would complete in-depth research on our targets. We had a preference list indicating what made a target more attractive to us. First we wanted to stay within our core industry whenever possible, having union contracts within same target corporation, then we looked at union density in surrounding location and industrial.
One campaign comes to mind to demonstrate this thought. We did our research well and found a map of subsidiaries within the corporation. They had a few unionized facilities within a highly unionized industry. We have been receiving request to meet workers at three plants but in different subsidiaries who wanted to unionize, we put a plan in motion that we would carefully build our internal support in the three targeted plants through our “Volunteer organizing Committee” (VOC). While we were growing a support base in the three main facilities we also were reaching out to employees in other plants through local unions and community connections in those areas.

When we were strong enough to file petitions in the main targets (70 % signed signature cards) we also had about 35% in another plant, in another state. I decided to send organizers to two other facilities where we had little support but enough to monitor reaction, we were probing their strength and resources within the corporation. As we hit more locations with flyers we noticed the same HR team was going to all the plants in all the subsidiaries which exposed their weaknesses and lack of resources to us. We then filed a petition at the plant with only 35% support and a week later we hit the real targets and filed the next three on a Friday at 3:50 pm to start the clock on the election process and give us time over the weekend to announce the petition to the employees and prepare the internal committee for the next actions.

As the campaigns continued we built pressure on the company, it was easy to keep them preoccupied throughout the country simply by creating the diversion. In addition, we also filed 23 unfair labor practice charges in the “detour” plant with only 35% cards signed. It took a lot of work, but we won all three of our target plants. I don’t think they thought we were smart enough or resourceful enough to follow their corporate network but their arrogance cost them 3 three plants.