Lest you think I never cover anything on the left side of the blogosphere, here is a fascinating and detailed multi-part series about union-busting at the nonprofit FFPIRG. (Minnesota members can take comfort: MPIRG is not affiliated with the organization described here.)
The link provided goes to the conclusion; use the links to "first post," "part two," "part three," etc. at the top of the page to navigate the story.
My disclaimer on this topic is that, as a graduate student, I once worked very hard for a "no" vote on a grad student union — my beat was posting anti-union flyers in the Social Sciences Tower, which was a pretty thankless job, let me tell you. But it wasn’t because I was against unionization, rather because I was against that particular union — a branch of a teachers’ union, and particularly because research assistants and teaching assistants were to be covered under the same bargaining unit, which is patently ridiculous. (And, unfortunately, enshrined in Minnesota state law — I still believe that TAs deserve to be unionized, but as an RA I didn’t want to get sucked into a bad-deal union that lined the pockets of Education Minnesota at our expense).
Anyway, the PIRG canvassers describe in the story should have had the opportunity to unionize, and they didn’t get it, largely because of legal means employed by the nonprofit to enable them to fire the organizers. How could this work?
"We’ve all come to realize," Christian [one of the organizers] said to me, referring to both the firings and the long months yet to come, "that our nation’s labor laws are simply not designed to protect employees from employers who resort to measures as self-destructive as what the Fund was willing to do to prevent our union."
It’s interesting. After reading it, I felt like telling the next canvasser who comes to my door, "Forget the donations. Here’s twenty bucks, go pay your rent with it."
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