------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the July 29, 2004 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
UNIONS DEFEND RIGHT TO ORGANIZE: CARD CHECK UNDER ATTACK
By Stephanie Hedgecoke
Yet another attack on workers' rights looms in a decision of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to review "card check," the process whereby an employer agrees to voluntary recognize a union if a majority of the employees have signed authorization cards. The NLRB plans to review recognition of the United Auto Workers at a Dana plant in Upper San dusky, Ohio, and a Metaldyne plant in St. Mary's, Pa., after the elections, with a decision probable in 2005.
An overturn of these two union victories would be an attack on the entire working class and a setback of the most basic and oldest workers' rights.
The long history of voluntary recognition of a union by an employer based on a majority of workers in a unit signing cards "goes back to the 19th century," says Com munications Workers Executive Vice-President Larry Cohen, and it "predates any labor law in any country."
CWA is just one of the unions that has brought in tens of thousands of new members through card check in recent years. In the last 15 months, CWA successfully reorganized 3,000 New Mexico state workers. Some 5,000 of that state's government workers had had union recognition stripped from them in 1999. CWA is working to organize the 1,500 other eligible New Mexico government workers in a multi-local drive led by a committee of 300 state workers.
In 1999 alone, CWA used card check to win union recognition for workers at Southwestern Bell Wireless in Texas, AT&T local service in Arizona, SBC wireless workers in several states, nurses and technicians in New York, and printing workers in Florida and New York.
Union activists plan a Million Worker March for Oct. 17 in Washington, D.C., to fight for workers' rights and to set back the attacks on union organizing that have characterized every presidential administration since Ronald Reagan.
Reagan's all-out war on the air traffic controllers' union was actually planned by the previous administration of Democrat Jimmy Carter.
Defense of card check and overtime rights are just two of the basic rights of working people that must be fought for in the streets, no matter who wins the election.
[Hedgecoke is a member of CWA Local 14156.]
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