IAKAL, but AFAIK no one has the right to detain anyone unless an arrest is imminent. In fact, in Nevada, detaining someone against their will is called “felony kidnapping”. You can ring up OJ at the High Desert State Prison and ask him about that one.
You asked to be enlightened. I responded. Statements were made that companies were able to talk to workers while preventing unions from coming on-site. I pointed out that unions can do the same thing.
I figured it was just a dramatic plot point with no basis in reality. TV shows not reflecting real life, who would have thought? 
GM execs took temporary pay cuts recently as they did in 1991. I suspect they will do it again in 2009.
cite?
How much of a pay cut? 30%, like the UAW took? Was it all of the execs, like it was all of the UAW workers? And the UAW cut was in their contract, so it’s there until renegotiation, not just for 1 year.
Thank you.
You said tho, that “GM execs took temporary pay cuts recently”, but your cite is more than 18 months old.
Have they taken any more pay cuts this year?
They’re not blocking access to the public thoroughfare, though.
Note also they’re talking about “base salary”, which leaves all the other perks and benefits out of the discussion. Even with the cuts, at a minimum they’re making 10 to 20 times more than the median salary for workers, no matter how many years’ experience they have.
Missed the window.
Even with such pay cuts in place (Magiver notes they are temporary; can he say the same for the wage cuts forced on workers?):
Eppur le richezze ci sono!
Ok… so how are they stopping people from entering the business?
By forming a line parallel to the public thoroughfare off of which the private thoroughfare heads, standing just outside the property line. Public thoroughfare not blocked, private thoroughfare blocked.
That distinction is meaningless. You are in a public thoroughfare blocking access to that thoroughfare. If you don’t believe me, go ahead and block the driveway to your local WalMart. Let me know how long it takes before you get hauled off to jail.
The fuck? All votes affect other people. You want to make all votes open because they affect other people? That’s precisely why you don’t make them open, good God. They affect other people, which means other people want to influence your vote. One of the ways to do this is intimidation. So you hide votes. It’s pretty damn simple.
Elected Representatives, on the other hand, are supposed to be intimidated, they should be scared that if they make the wrong decisions they will get voted out.
I can tell you the UAW workers are taking a pretty good pay cut in my area. They’ve shut down every plant except for a couple of GM offshoots which won’t be around much longer. This was a heavy GM town with a history going back to the beginning of the company. It’s sad, and it was preventable.
Nope. Never said that. In this specific instance, however, the secret ballot is proving to be an active hindrance to people who want union representation. Which means, in this instance, there needs to be a system that makes joining a union easier.
I’m pretty sure GM isn’t closing down, period; obviously they’re under the “too big to fail” category. So where are they going?
No, they are not. They’re blocking access to the private thoroughfare, not the public one.
Me by myself? Obviously not long. A couple hundred employees striking to get a union (something I’d be quite happy to see)? Entirely different story.
I’m sorry, I just keep getting hung up on this position. Can you explain how this is, exactly? A secret ballot makes the voter free from coercion. How is it that employees are not voting their actual desires? And if they are, and the majority does not want a union, how is this bad?
Imagine if the McCain camp and the Bush administration were telling people that if Obama won, the United States as we know it would come to an end, and our military would be dissolved. Throw in a Red Alert from the Dept of Homeland Security, and a message that if anyone publically supports Obama, they will be arrested for treason.
This would freak people out, and sway more than a few votes to McCain, even if the people actually wanted Obama to be their president.
An anti-union campaign run by a company that’s employeed union-busting PR and law firms is worse than this. When the “people in charge” start using fear as a motivator, the people under them will react accordingly (remember the lead up to the Iraq War? Complete bullshit, but the administration scared us into supporting the war.)
I’ll say it again: A lot of you think that if the Free Choice Act passes, unions will start using intimidation in great numbers to get a majority. Well, any union that does this will fail. And any union worth its weight in salt knows this. They will either get hit with a ULP (unfair labor practice), or they will be decertified within a year because the members don’t really want to belong. (Decertification is still easier than certification.) On the other hand, as things currently stand, a company has nothing to lose by intimidating its workers; if found guilty of a ULP, they typically only have to post a “mea culpa” written in legal mumbo-jumbo, and it usually doesn’t even end up in a location where workers will see it.
If anything, this new law will make unions more accountable because: 1) They now have to get 50% plus 1 of the workforce to support the union. As it currently stands, you only need a majority of those that bother to vote. And 2) We will not waste our time and resources trying to get people to sign cards that don’t really want to sign a card. Because, as I said, if this happens, this will set the whole thing up for failure-- either through a ULP or decertification.
Are there bum unions out there that act disgracefully in organizing campaigns? Of course. Some of you actually have stories (still haven’t heard what union was trying to organize you…), and like most anecdotes passed around about unions, they are negative.
Most organizing campaigns are exciting for the workers involved. But you rarely hear about the positive stories, so people on the outside think all unions are about is intimidation and strong-arming. Similarly, the only time you hear about contract negotiations on the news is when workers vote to strike, so people on the outside think unions are always going on strike, even though more than 99% of all contract negotiations are resolved without a work stoppage.
Bottom line: Union intimidation is not the norm in organizing campaigns. We don’t have the money to waste on people that don’t want a union. And union intimidation will not be the norm should Free Choice pass. Why would we want a short-term fix, only to have it immediately decertified by the workers we intimidated?
Sorry, I didn’t notice being asked before. UHW west.