We have a pretty good idea of how many workers get fired for their union organizing.
I've already posted the estimated proportions of workers who are fired for union organizing here (at <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20050516/010094.html>): "A study conducted by Harvard Law professor Paul Weiler found [in "Promises to Keep: Securing Workers' Rights to Self-Organization Under the NLRA," Harvard Law Review 96. 8 (June 1983)] that one in 20 union supporters were fired during election campaigns, while the AFL-CIO puts the figure at closer to one in eight" (Richard D. Kahlenberg, "Labor Organizing as a Civil Right," The American Prospect 11.20, <http://www.prospect.org/print/V11/20/kahlenberg-r.html>, 11 Sept. 2000). 1/8 = 12.5%
How many illegal firings take place, then? "AFL-CIO unions reportedly added almost 500,000 members (AFL-CIO 2002)," though "the net gain in U.S. membership was just 17,000" (Jack Fiorito and Paul Jarley, "Union Organizing Commitment: Rhetoric and Reality," The Industrial Relations Research Association, Proceedings of the 55th Annual Meeting, 2003 <http://www.press.uillinois.edu/journals/irra/proceedings2003/fiorito.html>, 2003); and "[f]or the 18 unions together, the success rate improved from 51 percent to 53 percent (from 49 percent to 52 percent for all unions)" from the late 1980s to the mid-to-late 1990s (Fiorito and Jarley, 2003). That means that at least roughly 1 million US workers experience union organizing every year, and probably about half of them initially express support for unionization before employers begin their anti-union campaigns, for "fully half of workers who don't already have a union say they would join a union tomorrow if given the chance" ("New Poll: Americans Skeptical of Corporations, Looking to Unions to Balance Corporate Power," <http://www.aflcio.org/aboutunions/ns08292002.cfm>, 4 Dec. 2002). 500,000 X 0.125 = 62,500. So, my estimate is that about 62,500 US workers get fired for union organizing annually.
If workers file unfair practice charges against employers, nearly half of them are found meritorious: "The proportion of charges found meritorious has trended upward over time. In 1990 44 percent of charges against employers were held meritorious compared to less than 40 percent in the 1950 to 1975 period" ("Fact Finding Report Issued by the Commission on the Future of Worker-Management Relations," <http://www.nathannewman.org/EDIN/.labor/.files/.archive/.dunlop/DunlopPreliminaryReport.html>, 2 Jun. 1994).
Some workers do not bother to file charges, so I'd estimate that about 38% of illegally fired workers win a back-pay order: "[i]n the 1950s, for example, workers who suffered reprisals for exercising the right to freedom of association numbered in the hundreds each year. In the 1960s, the number climbed into the thousands, reaching slightly over 6,000 in 1969. By the 1990s more than 20,000 workers each year were victims of discrimination leading to a back-pay order by the NLRB -- 23,580 in 1998" (Human Rights Watch, "Unfair Advantage: Workers' Freedom of Association in the United States under International Human Rights Standards," <http://hrw.org/reports/pdfs/u/us/uslbr008.pdf>, 2000, p. 13), and about a quarter of them likely win reinstatement orders if the trend indicated in Exhibit III-3 "Unfair Labor Practice Charges Against Employers" of the Dunlop Report holds ("Fact Finding Report Issued by the Commission on the Future of Worker-Management Relations," <http://www.nathannewman.org/EDIN/.labor/.files/.archive/.dunlop/DunlopPreliminaryReport.html>, 2 Jun. 1994). The main problem is that, even in the case of NLRB victories, workers find back-pay and reinstatement orders too little, too late, and too weakly enforced, for the reason that John Lacny explained: e.g., "In 1990, the average back pay award amounted to $ 2749 per discharge" ("Fact Finding Report Issued by the Commission on the Future of Worker-Management Relations," <http://www.nathannewman.org/EDIN/.labor/.files/.archive/.dunlop/DunlopPreliminaryReport.html>, 2 Jun. 1994).
As John Lacny noted, though, it is important to recognize that only a quarter of employers resort to illegal firings, three quarters of them preferring the use of legal tactics cooked up by anti-union consulting firms.
Now, compare all of the above stats with data of overall worker displacement: "Using the fairly strict definition of job displacement employed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), in any given year over this period [between 1991 and 2001], about 4 million workers or about 3 percent of the workforce had been displaced at some point in the preceding three years. Depending on assumptions about the likelihood that workers experienced repeated spells of displacement, between 6 and 11 percent of all workers were displaced at one point over the 11 years between 1991 and 2001" (John Schmitt, "Job Displacement over the Business Cycle, 1991-2001," <http://www.cepr.net/publications/displaced_workers.htm>, June 2004); and "During the January 2001 through December 2003 period, 5.3 million workers were displaced from jobs they had held for at least 3 years. . . . The number of displaced workers increased from 4.0 million in the previous survey that covered the period from January 1999 through December 2001. . . . An additional 6.1 million persons were displaced from jobs they had held for less than 3 years (referred to as short-tenured). Combining the short- and long-tenured groups, the number of displaced workers totaled 11.4 million, up from 10.1 million (as revised) in the prior survey" ("Worker Displacement, 2001-03," <http://www.bls.gov/news.release/disp.nr0.htm>, 30 Jul. 2004).
To repeat, a large majority of US workers get fired due to lack of effective political action, not because they get involved in union organizing or any other political activity.
>Why should workers overcome the real fear of being fired any more
>than the real fear of getting their hand cut off?
Because the hand is more important than the job, because there is no chance of growing your hand back; because there is a good chance of getting another job even under neoliberal capitalism; and because, if you get disabled, your chance of losing the job you have is high, your chance of getting a new comparable job is low, it's hard to qualify for disability benefits, and, if you do qualify for them, your benefits are low.
OSHA cannot prevent tragedies like that of Patrick M. Walters, a young apprentice with juvenile detention record who was too afraid to speak up, but union organizing can, if only more workers can overcome their very real fear of getting fired:
<blockquote>As the autopsy confirmed, death did not come right away for Patrick M. Walters. On June 14, 2002, while working on a sewer pipe in a trench 10 feet deep, he was buried alive under a rush of collapsing muck and mud. A husky plumber's apprentice, barely 22 years old, Mr. Walters clawed for the surface. Sludge filled his throat. Thousands of pounds of dirt pressed on his chest, squeezing and squeezing until he could not draw another breath.
His mother, Michelle Marts, was the first in his family to hear.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
"Was there a trench box?" she asked the investigator. He paused, she recalled. "He says, 'Ma'am, no safety procedures were followed. None.'
"He was just so disgusted."
Other officials shared his disgust, starting with the federal safety investigator who stood over the trench that night as Patrick Walters's body was pulled from the mud. Only two weeks before, the same investigator had caught men from the same company -- Moeves Plumbing -- working unprotected in a 15-foot-deep trench, a blatant violation of federal safety laws.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The inspector's boss, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration's top official in Cincinnati, was angry too. He knew Moeves Plumbing well. In 1989, he had confronted the company over another death. The circumstances were nearly identical: a deep trench, no box, a man buried alive.
But their professional disgust could not touch the pure rage of Patrick Walters's parents. A veteran plumber himself, Jeff Walters knew the treachery of trench walls. Moeves Plumbing would deny any wrongdoing and tell OSHA it was trying to do the right thing on safety. But to Jeff Walters, sending an untrained, unskilled apprentice into an unprotected, unstable, rain-saturated, 10-foot-deep trench was flat-out criminal.
"You done killed my boy!" he recalls screaming that night on the phone to Moeves Plumbing. (David Barstow, "A Trench Caves In; a Young Worker Is Dead. Is It a Crime?" [in a series titled "When Workers Die"], New York Times, 21 Dec. 2003, p. 1, <http://www.pulitzer.org/year/2004/public-service/works/nytimes1.html>)</blockquote>
jthorn65 at sbcglobal.net jthorn65 at sbcglobal.net, Thu May 19
16:52:24 PDT 2005:
>But this still only tells the numbers of people fired AFTER a union
>drive begins. When we approached union officials we were asked how
>great was support for unionizing our workplace? We answered that we
>did not know. They advised us to go and "using discretion" find out
>if at least 30% would be interested.
Once you begin asking your fellow workers whether they are interested in unionizing, you have already initiated a concerted activity to improve your wages and conditions in the eye of your boss, regardless of whether any existing union is supporting a unionizing drive. Your concerted activity was protected by labor law. In fact, "federal labor law protection for 'concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection' extends beyond unionized workforces" (Duff, White & Boykin, LLC, "Can Sending an E-mail Be Considered 'Concerted Activity' Protected by Federal Labor Law?" <http://library.findlaw.com/1998/Jul/1/130604.html>). You could have filed an unfair labor practice charge: "The National Labor Relations Board and YOU: Unfair Labor Practices" (<http://www.nlrb.gov/nlrb/shared_files/brochures/engulp.asp>). You had a nearly 50% chance of winning. Winning would not have been of much financial help to you personally, but it would have set a good precedent given your unusual circumstance (supervisory workers initiating unionization).
>They were not going to spend their time on a "wild goose chase"
>(their words) trying to organize workers who might have no interest
>just because three employees asked them to.
This brings us back to the original topic: the importance of autonomous shop-floor organizations. Whether workers pursue unionization via an NLRB election, a card check campaign with a neutrality agreement, "members-only unionism" (aka "minority unionism"), or anything else, autonomous shop-floor organizations are indispensable. -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Monthly Review: <http://monthlyreview.org/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>