UNITE HERE, a union of garment and hospitality employees whose leaders are dedicated to avoiding secret ballot elections, offers telling examples of inappropriate union activity that harms employers and employees.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that casino workers filed unfair labor practice charges after they were forced into the union through the card
check procedure:
“A lady ... told me that if I did not sign for the union that my wife who works at Caesars Palace will be fired,” one affidavit reads. “That is why I signed.”
In another sworn statement, an MGM employee said that a union recruiter told people a vote would follow the card signings. A different employee reported being told that if MGM management discovered she was gay, she would be fired, and that the union was her
only protection.
“Other employees were threatened with deportation,” [a plaintiff’s attorney] said. “Some were followed. People who wore nonunion buttons had them ripped from their clothes. It was all done with the idea of forcing people to sign the union cards.”
In July 2006, the Placer County Superior Court ordered the union UNITE HERE to pay $17.3 million in compensatory damages to a group of Northern California doctors and hospitals. Earlier that month, a jury found UNITE HERE guilty of acting with “fraud, malice, and oppression” when it sent misleading and defamatory postcards attempting to scare expectant mothers away from a hospital facility. The hospital was using an outside commercial laundry service, which at the time was in a labor dispute with UNITE HERE. In April 2007, UNITE HERE reached a settlement with a Wisconsin hospital that had alleged “harassment and interference” with patients when the union was seeking to represent a third-party contractor.
In late August of 2006, U.S. District Judge Stewart Dalzell ordered UNITE to pay targeted employees of Cintas Corporation $2,500 each, plus attorneys’ fees and other costs. Union organizers had made uninvited, unwanted home visits after illegally obtaining employees’ addresses through motor vehicles records.
In April 2007, employees of a Los Angeles hotel issued a statement calling on UNITE HERE’s officials to stop harassing them. According to the Daily Breeze, the employees said:
As employees of the LAX Hilton, we are tired of being bullied by UNITE Here. In these last two years we have been the target of a campaign not for the betterment of employees or wages or benefits, but simply to increase the union’s membership.
Read more at LaborPains.org