November EC Meeting 2019

Workplace suppression is matched by what the Americans call voter suppression. Southern states disproportionately adopt “voter suppression” measures, making it more difficult for citizens to vote, and such tactics are aimed at reducing African-American turnout in local, state and federal elections. For example, nine Southern states, out of just 15 states nationwide, require a government-issued photo identification to vote. Southern states also disproportionately draw congressional district boundaries to ensure Republican victories in all but a few “packed” (with African-American voters) districts. The report looks in detail of the anti-union activities of eight leading EU-based companies, Airbus, Fresenius Medical Care, Ikea, Lifestyle Services Group, Sky Chefs, Nestle, Schellecke, Skanska, ThyssenKrupp and Volkswagen. The accounts of the employers’ actions make your blood boil and the resistance of workforces and unions is heartening, packed with courage and determination. The patterns of corporate misbehaviour to get unions away at all costs are similar within the various ferocious onslaughts that have been launched. Airbus likes to hold “captive audience” meetings — attendance is compulsory to hear bosses threaten fire and brimstone if people join a union. The employer offers unmediated industrial and personnel relations, they say: “We told all the people we recruited that we were planning to create an environment where employees have a direct relationship with management.” Fresenius interrogates its employees about their union activities and support for the union and refuses to give wage increases to workers involved in organising.

Ikea has a lot in its anti-union armoury. It was caught out:

** Telling workers that union representatives were engaged in “invasion of privacy” by contacting them

** Surveilling workers’ union activities

** Telling workers that management would undertake a “witch-hunt” against union supporters

** Putting anti-union propaganda on bulletin boards around the store

** Disseminating false, derogatory statements to workers about union supporters and

** Turning “team meetings” into anti-union forums with implicit threats of negative consequences if workers pursued an organising effort. At Nestle one brave young worker spoke out against the sustained campaign against them by HR managers flown in from all over the country to swamp plants with propaganda. Kim Carmichael, a 17-year Nestle employee, spoke of her experience: “There were HR people from everywhere, from California. They stayed a week at a time, then a new group came in, then the others would come back.