Brown University
Labor/student coalition fights union busting
By Michael
Shaw
Providence, R.I.
On April 26 over 100 students, faculty and community labor
boosters turned out on the main green of Brown University to
denounce illegal attempts by Store Operations managers to
stop a union from being voted into the department.
Last June, the employees in the Stores Operations
department at Brown had voted to join SEIU 134, the union
that represents Brown food service and facilities management
employees. Stores Ops workers do exactly the same job as
other personnel at Brown who get paid at least $3 more per
hour. Stores Ops employees have received only a $1 raise
during their three-year tenure at Brown, while their
colleagues have received regular raises every year.
As the union and Brown negotiate a contract for the Stores
Ops workers, employees who voted for the union have faced a
multitude of illegal harassment and intimidation tactics.
Hours before the union vote last June, a Stores Ops
supervisor confronted an employee and urged him to vote
against the union.
Stores Ops employees who voted for the union have been
suspended for minor infractions, and have been denied
opportunity to work overtime that was previously available to
them. Employees who didn't vote for the union have suffered
neither suspensions nor loss of overtime.
Union representative Karen McAninch is in possession of a
document in which Stores Operations managers lay out a
strategy to force a Stores Ops worker to disobey a direct
order, which would give them grounds for dismissing him. The
document also requests permission to terminate another union
supporter to "send a message to at least one other person
that we do mean business."
The union and its supporters mean business, too. McAninch
has filed charges against Brown with the National Labor
Relations Board. As the legal process unfolds, the rally was
called to show Brown that union-busting will not be
tolerated. Raucous students, including some from the Brown
Student/ Labor Alliance and grad students who are unionizing
with United Auto Workers, joined with militant labor from the
Providence area to voice their outrage and solidarity.
Peter Nicholaus, an African American Store Ops employee
who voted union, told the crowd that at a meeting held at his
house after work, he opened the door to let McAninch in only
to see Store Ops supervisors driving back and forth on his
street.
Chanting "Union busting is disgusting," the crowd marched
through the green and right into the university president's
building to deliver petitions against Brown's scurrilous
anti-labor actions.
Support the Stores Ops employees' struggle by e-mailing
President Blumstein (Sheila_Blumstein@brown.edu) and Chief
Financial Officer Donald Reaves (Donald_Reaves@brown.edu) and
telling them to denounce the intimidation and hold the
appropriate managers accountable.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
Subscribe wwnews-subscribe@workersworld.net
Support independent news http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php)
HOME
:: U.S. NEWS ::
WORLD NEWS ::
EDITORIALS
:: SUBSCRIBE ::
DONATE
Email
this article
Printable
page