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Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Beer and Union Busting in Pennsylvania


Cross-posted to DailyKos and Diatribune
Imagine the following scenario: You work a decent, well paying, union job at a local brewery. The town you live in is fairly small, and the brewery provides the majority of employment for the area. You love your job, and you need to hang on to it, in order to keep your family afloat. If you were to be laid off, you likely wouldn't be able to find anything else in the area. Certainly nothing that pays as well.
One day, you, and the other employees, are called into your boss's office, to talk about the future of the business. He blasts the union - calling them "those guys from Philadelphia" - and threatens to close the company if the workforce remains unionized.
What would you do in that situation? Because it's precisely the situation that workers at D.G. Yuengling & Son faced last year - and, it's why the Teamsters Union is now boycotting Yuengling's products.
Unions in America have been on the decline for the past 40 years. The decline has been documented in many places, including in a recent diary by ManfromMiddletown, in which he notes that only 1 in 8 workers belonged to a union in 2005, as compared to 1 in 3 in 1964. This has major ramifications for the standard of living of U.S. workers, for, as noted by the AFL-CIO, the U.S. Department of Labor's own statistics show that union workers earn 30% more than non-union workers. For many Americans, the decline of unions has firmly slammed shut the doors that once allowed access to the middle class.
What, exactly, is driving the decline? While conservatives contend that the decline of unions has more to do with their "lack of relevancy" to the modern labor force, the truth is that workers face anti-union pressure, both subtle and not so subtle, every day. Those pressures, and the fear of losing a steady paycheck, can be enough to keep unions at bay.
It is such pressures that, according to the Teamsters Union, lead the workers at D.G. Yuengling to dump their union.
A small, regional brewery for most of its history, D.G. Yuengling was founded in 1829, by the great-grandfather of Dick Yuengling Jr., the man who runs the operation now. In the 1990s, however, the company expanded rapidly, due in part to the popularity of a lager it introduced in the late 1980s.
The only major employer in Pottstown, PA, D.G. Yuengling was known for having a decent relationship with its union. This relationship took a turn for the worse in 2005, however, when the Labor Board rewarded back pay to a number of former employees for being laid off "out of seniority." It was in the shadow of that decision that Dick Yuengling called his employees into his office and, according to the Teamsters, as written in a recent article in the Morning Call Online:
Dick Yuengling told the workers that he would sell the business or shut it down unless they shed their decades-long affiliation with the Teamsters.
After their meeting with Yuengling, brewery employees started a decertification drive, and opted to dump their union. According to the Teamsters, their view of the events - that Dick Yuengling threatened to take the company out of business unless his workers dumped their union - is supported
by two people who said they were at the meeting and who spoke with The Associated Press at the request of the union. They said that Dick Yuengling Jr. blasted the "guys from Philadelphia" - the Teamsters. They said he also told employees they should "read between the lines" and threatened to close the brewery. The two said they did not want to be identified because they feared retribution.
However, proving the accusations, even with two witnesses, can be difficult when so many other workers – and so many in your town – rely on Yuengling for employment:
When the union took its allegations to the Philadelphia office of the NLRB, Grace said no one would testify against Yuengling. Instead, workers told labor board investigators that Yuengling had given them a "pep talk" about the company's future "and the need for employees to work harder," according to Dorothy Moore-Duncan, an NLRB regional director.
As with many labor disputes, problems have developed in finding witnesses who are willing to come forward. Yuengling employees have to think about their families, which means living in fear of losing their $20 an hour jobs. Furthermore, the importance of Yuengling to the employment and economy of Pottsville creates pressure on people not to testify about any anti-union intimidation that may have occurred.
As much as conservatives want to claim unions are declining because of "corruption" or "irrelevance," the fact of the matter is that employer pressure, and government policies that favor employers over unions, have as much, if not more, to do with the decline of organized labor than anything else. Many major employers begin working hard to instill an anti-union message in their employees from the day they hire them. Often, employees are required to report union organizing as soon as they hear of it. And, as pointed out by a Leadership Conference on Civil Rights report on the matter, more than three-quarters of companies require employees to attend one on one anti-union seminars when workers launch an organizing effort. Some employers, such as Wal-Mart, even prefer to engage in a "pre-emptive strike," by requiring new hires to attend anti-union seminars before they even begin their first day of work. In Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich describes part of an eight-hour orientation that all future Wal-Mart employees are required to attend:
The theme of covert tensions, overcome by right thinking and positive attitude, continues in the twelve-minute video entitled You've Picked a Great Place to Work. Here, various associates testify to the "essential feeling of family for which Wal-Mart is so well known," leading up to the conclusion that we don't need a union. Once, long ago, unions had a place in American society, but they "no longer have much to offer workers, which is why people are leaving them by the droves." But, we are warned that "unions have been targeting Wal-Mart for years." Why? For the dues money of course.
Even after employees have suffered through any anti-union messages they're required to view on the job, they must then face innumerable hurtles when they decide to form a union - hurtles that range from an employer that retains disproportionate control over the livelihood of its employees, to threats, intimidation, and outright termination. Every year, 23,000 Americans are fired for trying to form a union. And, once a majority of employees have signed cards favoring unions, employers, under the guise of "democracy," can force elections on the matter, and hold the unionization process up in red tape for years, if not decades. At that point, the nature of the game simply becomes to wear the union organizers down, until they or their supporters have left. Much of this activity falls into a legal gray area. Even when it is clearly illegal, anti-union government appointees at the top, combined with inadequate fines, make it hard for the law to mean anything.
What makes conservative arguments on unions all the more hallow is the fact that, despite the active campaign against unions by employers, support for unionizing has actually increased. As noted by the Conference on Civil Rights, the percentage of non-managerial workers who favor forming a union has gone from 44% in the 1990s, to 58% today. At the same time, however, only 7.4% of private sector workers are actually unionized, as compared to 11.3% in the 90s. If conservative assertions on unions are true, why, then, has the unionization rate continued to decline, even while support for unions has measurably increased?
The truth, it seems, lies with the fact that unions are in decline because it's difficult for employees to form them. It's difficult for them to overcome the high priced anti-union consultants that employers hire, and the subtle – and not so subtle – intimidation that they face. It's difficult for even the most committed employee to put up with said intimidation for years on end, as the unionization process is drawn out. And, as the situation with D.G. Yuengling shows, it can even be difficult for a workforce to stay unionized in the face of local intimidation and community pressure. People need their jobs, which gives their employers an inordinate amount of influence over their lives. If faced with the decision between keeping their sole source of income versus fighting to keep their union, many people – especially in a small community, where they can be subject to community pressure – are going to go for the former.
The Teamsters have been trying to fight back in the Yuengling case, by urging a boycott of the brewery's products. Whether or not that boycott will be successful remains to be seen. However, according to Yuengling, the boycott has "fallen flat."
I hope the Teamsters continue to fight in this case. I will not be surprised if they're unsuccessful, as the boycott seems to have gained very little attention from the media, and, as it can be very difficult to overcome the fears that someone might have of losing their position in the world.
At the end of the day, however, I can't fault the Teamsters for trying. Make no mistake: Regardless of whether Yuengling has taken steps to decrease its standards for its workers now, they will do that, someday, if their workers continue to go without representation.
The pressures facing unions today may be seemingly insurmountable, but there is no doubt in my mind that the world was better off when more workers had the voice that unions provided them. We need to return to that world. We need to return to that world by electing better politicians. We need to return to that world by enacting sensible unionization policies, such as the Employee Free Choice Act. And, we need to return to that world by drawing a line in the sand, by saying that no worker intimidation, anywhere, anytime, is acceptable.
That line has been drawn, today, in a small town in Pennsylvania. Remember that, the next time you go out to buy beer.
Todd Says:
Sun, 06/03/2007 - 11:20pm
We showed the documentary "Battle of Local 5668" at this year's May Day event. This new documentary by tells the harrowing story of workers locked out of their jobs at Ravenswood Aluminum Plant in West Virginia. It is shameful. People are not a commodity. Bless the unions that have to remind greedy stockholders of this every hour of every day.
Great blog.

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