Dear Nathan; I think you're right. It has also been my experience that when a group massively withdraws a petition to organize, they have been subject to some form of systematic harrassment. I had forgotten all about Taft-Hartley until I read your earlier message. This has been used systematically in the phone company to prevent first level managers from either joining current unions or forming their own unions. I also question the idea of exempting employees who dealt with 'sensitive' information. Sensitive is a completely subjective term. maggie coleman [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------- Forwarded message: From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Nathan Newman) Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Multiple recipients of list) Date: 96-10-30 12:46:02 EST On Wed, 30 Oct 1996 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Phew, some letter! Well, I am certainly glad that aiusa did not oppose the > unionization of its staff. It would, however, be interesting to find out > some of the history of the debate just for general discussion. Maggie, As noted in my post, I am more outraged by this "explanation" than by the original accusations. Any times workers file for an election, go to NLRB hearings to haggle over the bargaining unit, then turn around and petition to withdraw from the election--I smell serious harassment of workers. The original story of threatening "supervisors" (a third of the workforce not covered by union protections) in order to blackmail the rest of the workers to abandon the union drive sounds much more credible than the management lawyer language put out by the AIUSA board chair. And the fact that the AIUSA Board Chair rewrote history to justify Taft-Hartley anti-union legislation as a "protection" for union workers is Orwellian and disgusting coming from a head of a human rights organization. I have been a supporter of AI but I am not going to contribute to any organization that defends Taft-Hartley. --Nathan Newman
