Walmart, when will you learn

Just in on my email from Progress Ohio:




Get Caught Even Mentioning the Word "Union" and You Will Be

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE May 7, 2007
Contact: Brian Rothenberg, Spokesman 614-441-9145
***MEDIA RELEASE***
Wal-Mart’s routine practice of violating U.S. workers’ rights
Americans United for Change to deliver damning new report
on WalMart to Voinovich & Brown
Report spotlights the need to pass the Employee Free Choice Act
[COLUMBUS] – As more and more of America’s working people are struggling to make ends meet and our middle class is disappearing, Americans United for Change along with ProgressOhio and UFCW officials will deliver a damning new report to Ohio Senators Voinovich and Brown detailing the disturbingly systematic union-busting practices of Wal-Mart, the largest private employer in the United States.
The report by The Human Rights Watch includes intimidating and even illegal firing of employees who attempt to exercise their right to freedom of association.
Click here to download ‘Discounting Rights: Wal-Mart's Violation of US Workers’ Right to Freedom of Association’
“Wal-Mart is the textbook example of how badly broken U.S. labor laws are,” said Brian Rothenberg, Executive Director Of ProgressOhio. “There’s no better example of how millions of workers are being denied, through systematic intimidation and coercion, of their right to join together to bargain for better pay, improved benefits and retirement security. And there’s no better reason for Senator to fix this system give our disappearing middle class a fighting chance by supporting the Employee Free Choice Act.”
The timely new report examines in depth the tactics that Wal-Mart uses to preempt workers’ organizing efforts and undermine workers’ freedom of association at its US stores. The report focuses first on tactics and policies that, though they largely comply with US law, create a work environment so hostile to union formation that they coercively interfere with workers’ internationally recognized right to decide freely for themselves whether to organize.
A separate chapter examines Wal-Mart’s anti-union tactics that violate both US and international law and contribute to the generalized fear many Wal-Mart workers report feeling whenever the topic of union formation is broached. Five separate case studies illustrate the very real human impacts of Wal-Mart’s attack on workers’ right to freedom of association. Human Rights Watch is an independent, nongovernmental organization dedicated to protecting the human rights of people around the world.
The Employee Free Choice Act would:
Strengthen penalties for companies that illegally coerce or intimidate employees in a effort to prevent them from forming a union
Bring in a neutral third party to settle a contract when a company and a newly certified union cannot agree on a contract after three months of negotiations
Establish 'majority sign up', meaning that if a majority of the employees sign union authorization cards, validated by the National Labor Relations Board, a company must recognize the union.
“The middle class in this country are losing ground – losing health care coverage, retirement security, and jobs,” added Jeremy Funk, of Americans United For Change. A union voice can change all that. In fact, workers who belong to a union earn 30 percent more than nonunion workers than nonunion workers. They’re 62 percent more likely to have employer-provided health coverage and four times more likely to have pensions.
The Employee Free Choice Act would give the 60 million American workers the chance they have been denied for far too to unite and rise together. It’s about leveling the playing field in a system that’s stacked entirely in employers’ favor – a system that lets huge corporations like Wal-Mart routinely get away with harassment, intimidation, coercion and even dismissal of workers who try to organize unions.