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 An employee of Complete Cleaning in Lynn, MA has filed a complaint with the NLRB against SEIU Local 615 in Boston, accusing union organizers of harassment and coercion in the union’s ongoing push to unionize Complete Cleaning’s 80 member workforce. The National Right to Work Foundation is aiding that employee with his complaint.
Employee Jairo Hernandez says he speaks for most of his co-workers when he talks about fear tactics, harassing house visits and relentless pressure on both the workers and the company to unionize. “There has never been a vote but they’re trying to force us,” Hernandez said. “They have gone to a lot of the (employees’) houses and I don’t know how they got the addresses … We’re tired of this. One lady was telling (workers) that
Continue reading SEIU Watch
You may have noticed the recent spate of negative press about allegations of abysmal working conditions in Chinese Foxconn factories that produce Apple iPad and iPhone. Setting aside for another day a more balanced perspective on working conditions in an emerging economy we turn our attention to working conditions here, in an Apple retail store.
Apple’s retail stores, which turned 10 years old last month, have been ranked in the top 50 best places to work by job tracker Glassdoor.com for three years running. Apple has even admitted that it’s easier to get a job at its corporate headquarters than one of its retail stores because the draw is so great and the turnover so low.
 That didn’t stop disgruntled Genius Cory Moll from forming the Apple Retail Workers Union last year and launching
Continue reading The Burdens of Non-Transformational Employment
 In another Detroit mystery twist, Reuters is now reporting that the UAW has targeted Volkswagen and Daimler AG for its multi-million dollar “do-or-die” organizing effort. There was ongoing speculation through 2011 as the union dragged its feet on naming its target, presumably because they couldn’t find a campaign out there they could win. There were persistent rumors that the union would target Nissan, then it began picketing of Hyundai dealerships, and last month UAW president Bob King’s made a cagey non-pronouncement that the union doesn’t use the word “target” anymore.
German companies can be easily bullied at home by German unions into remaining silent and “neutral” during an organizing drive making them a much softer target for American unions than their
Continue reading Are the Germans the Real UAW Target?
 Filmmaker and consummate union gasbag Michael Moore is at it again, this time calling on frostbitten Occupy Wall Street protestors to take it indoors this winter and get to unionizing their jobs. ( jobs?? ) And he does so while, in a totally non-capitalist fashion of course, promoting his own video.
“Let’s spend the winter organizing workplaces into unions. OR, if you already have a union, demand that your leaders get off their ass and get aggressive like our grandparents did.” Moore then goes on… and on… to but again invoke the ghosts of the Flint sitdown strike, the irony being Flint is now a burnt out shell with a 27% unemployment rate due largely to unsustainable labor costs and a hostile business environment.
“Here are
Continue reading Up Next: Occupy Your Job
In this issue:
• Union Bailout Update • Occupy Does Union Bidding in Port Protests • UAW Not Targeting Nissan, Much • Teamster $150K Club • Scoreboard, SEIU Watch, Sticky Fingers and more…
Union Bailout Update
Breaking News:
President Obama announced late Wednesday evening that he plans to nominate two lawyers to the National Labor Relations Board. The Board will no longer be able to issue decisions or create major new rules without a three member quorum and Craig Becker’s recess appointment ends on Dec. 31.
The president will nominated Sharon Block, deputy secretary for congressional affairs at the Department of Labor, and Richard Griffin, who is the general counsel for the International Union of Operating Engineers. Both would be considered
Continue reading INK December 15, 2011
Paul Munsch is the owner of St. Louis Paving in St. Louis, Missouri. He and his employees have faced years of bullying by the union.
  
A little over a year ago we held a seminar in the Inland Empire region in southern California, to discuss the Warehouse Workers for Justice expanding organizing tactics in that area. It was only a matter of time before the WWJ expanded their focus to other transportation hubs, and it is now Chicago’s turn to see the pressure ratcheted up.
 On mid-October, the group formed an organizing committee in Chicago and begun to turn up the heat on the local warehouses. Their typical tactics include lawsuits, media releases, public pressure and in-plant action, and with the growing sophistication of the use of social media, along with the swell of Occupy Wall Street activity spilling over, it is likely that this new focused effort will be more energetic than its southern California
Continue reading Chicago Battle Looming
In this issue:
Union Bailout Update Disability Fund “Rail Roaded” Pelosi Admits Anti-Boeing Bias SEIU Decert At California Hospital Teamsters Watch, Only In A Union, Sticky Fingers and more…
NOTICE: You can make a PDF of this issue of INK directly from the post. Click here for instructions on how to do so.
http://lrionline.com/easy-way-to-make-our-posts-and-ink-issues-into-pdfs
Union Bailout Update
The groundswell of blowback against union hubris continues to rise, as both state and national legislators and executives work to reign in Big Labor. As the game of political tug-of-war continues, much of the energy will lapse into rhetoric, but there may be enough momentum now to see some benefit for American businesses come out of the bottom of the funnel.
Cantor
Last week, the House Committee on Education
Continue reading INK November 3, 2011
 The Machinists have launched a new iPad/iPhone/Android application, ostensibly designed to bring the IAM Journal to its readership, but more likely to be used as a tool for coordinating organizing campaigns, boycotts, strikes, and corporate campaigns. The app is currently available for the iPad, and their website shows that the phone versions are “coming soon.”
The Communication Workers are still battling it out with Verizon, recently launching a new “iWon’t Upgrade” campaign attempting to foment public support for the CWA’s fight with the communications company. The corporate campaign is “asking Americans to delay upgrading to the new iPhone on Verizon Wireless until the company agrees to a fair contract with its workers.” The site is designed to coordinate leafleting campaigns at local Verizon outlets.
 Peter Morse, an attorney representing several domestic and foreign car manufactures, explained the strategy the United Auto Workers may use trying to secure a toehold in the foreign auto manufacturers it has targeted.
“It’s very difficult to get a majority of the thousands of workers at these plants to be angry and want a union at one time,” Morse said. “But as an alternative strategy, we [sic] may try to break up the staff and go after the weakest link inside the plant or to target smaller suppliers to those plants.”
Morse suggested the UAW could try organizing auto suppliers or segments of the assembly plant staff where discontent may be greatest. ”They can try to catch a lot of 2-pound smallmouth bass and leave the tarpon fishing for later.”
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An employee of Complete Cleaning in Lynn, MA has filed a complaint with the NLRB against SEIU Local 615 in Boston, accusing union organizers of harassment and coercion in the union’s ongoing push to unionize Complete Cleaning’s 80 member workforce. The National Right to Work Foundation is aiding that employee with his complaint.
