For almost a year, American Family Insurance has turned a deaf ear to the plight of Clean Power janitors who are seeking better pay, health care benefits and job security. Now it appears the company is assisting with a union-busting campaign in an effort to keep rock-bottom rates for Clean Power’s cleaning services.
On several occasions, the Interfaith Coalition for Worker Justice has asked for a meeting with American Family’s CEO Harvey Pierce to talk about the conditions of workers who clean the company’s offices. The only response to the ICWJ was that American Family Insurance would not interfere in the personnel matters of its contractor, Clean Power.
Janitors, however, are telling the ICWJ that American Family has allowed antiunion “captive audience” meetings to be held at its headquarters, and that janitors who clean other east side buildings were brought in to those meetings as well.
One evening at the start of their shifts, 50 to 60 janitors were rounded up and divided into English-speaking and Spanish-speaking groups and shown a video falsely portraying the union as not representing the best interests of workers. Afterwards, supervisors read a letter from Clean Power management ‘thanking’ the workers for not supporting the union.
“There has never been any vote or anything of that nature, so it is unclear why Clean Power used this language, but its a typical union-busting tactic to ‘thank’ workers for ‘not supporting the union’. It’s a barely-legal method of letting workers know that the company is NOT in favor of a union,” says Leone Bicchieri, lead organizer with SEIU Local 1.
“At least one worker stood up and openly questioned why the company was doing this, and expressed concern that this type of captive audience meeting was taking place. This worker was not given a response.”
The meetings did cause some workers to become confused about the union campaign, and to be scared to participate. “Others became quite angry after the event,” said Bicchieri. “In fact, we found out because several different workers notified us the next day, expressing anger about the company's tactic, and urging us to file a lawsuit against Clean Power. They thought this kind of activity was illegal.”
Under existing labor law, such meetings are legal even though unions aren’t allowed to present an opposing viewpoint in a similar setting. Workers can even be disciplined for not attending the meetings.
When workers try to form unions today, 92 percent of employers force them to sit through these mandatory, one-sided presentations of their employer’s beliefs about unions, according to research conducting by Cornell University’s Kate Bronfenbrenner.
“These janitors need their jobs and it’s unfair for Clean Power to use its power to coerce workers into giving up their right to free association,” says Jim Cavanaugh, president of the South Central Federation of Labor. “No worker should be forced to choose between losing their job and enduring a lecture which conflicts with their beliefs, including their beliefs about joining a union.”
Union Resolve
Some unions have weighed in on the side of the janitors by passing resolutions that express their disgust with Clean Power’s anti-union campaign.
In resolutions faxed to Clean Power, IBEW Local 159 and Madison Area Postal Workers tell management to stop intimidating workers and back off its antiunion campaign, condemning it as “unnecessary, mean-spirited, and immoral.” They also ask the company to sign a neutrality pledge with SEIU Local 1 as a public gesture of “goodwill”. Neutrality would allow Clean Power workers the freedom to organize without fear of retaliation by the company.
The communications also tell Clean Power that unions are committed to support janitors in their desire to earn better wages and more benefits and rights in the workplace. Concerns will also be shared with the owners and tenants of buildings where Clean Power has contracts, such as American Family Insurance, in the future.
The actions were taken as unions all over the U.S. marked December 10, International Human Rights Day, as a day to reaffirm the right to organize as a basic human right enshrined in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
For the past several years the American labor movement has taken this occasion to expose the fact that workers in this country to a large extent are denied the right to form unions because our laws are so heavily weighted on management’s side.