Your Union Hall is YOURS!
Thanks to the UWUA Local 304 members, your union has made the union hall our own. Your union officers have been busily sorting and filing almost 15 years of records concerning bargaining, NLRB charges, grievances, and other accumulated correspondence that is a part of the work of serving and protecting our membership.
15 years is not a typo, though our union wasn’t certified until 2010, there is also of years of records from the switch from Allegheny to First Energy, as well as all the files from our organizing drive.
Having a union hall of our own allows us to do this, as a benefit to the membership, but, the hall itself is YOURS.
If you are a member in good standing, you can use the union hall for your own activities. Whether it’s a birthday, anniversary, a dinner, a business meeting, or other instances in which an office or meeting setting is needed. Your hall has Wi-Fi, a printer and FAX machine, tables, chairs, a kitchen, all at your disposal.
All you have to do is contact an Executive Board Officer to schedule the use of the hall. As long as your request doesn’t conflict with your union’s business needs on the date of your event, an Officer or Trustee who are key holders, will make sure you have access to the hall.
The only restriction is common sense in assuring that your use of the hall is for wholesome activities that do not conflict with the Union’s and Labor’s primary missions of representing workers, or are in conflict with the U.S. Constitution, the Constitution of the Utility Workers Union Of America, AFL-CIO, and/or UWUA Local 304’s By-Laws and collective bargaining agreement.
Anyone using the hall will be responsible to leave it clean and well-ordered upon completion of their use and that any member using the hall will be responsible for any damages caused by them or their guests.
Being a Union Is All About Making Things Better
At January’s Regular Meeting, we got our first glimpse of the process we have to follow to offer our membership healthcare through our union. The CEO, Mr. Elliot Dinkin, from Cowden Health and Welfare Consulting Services gave a presentation of what we can expect as we navigate through the process of being able to offer the membership a more affordable choice in their healthcare plans.
Senior Consultant, Jessica Grande, was also there to answer members questions, which there were some very good ones asked,
Cowden administers the healthcare plan for our brothers and sisters in UWUA System Local 102, and have for the last three (3) years. Even before Harrison went with the UWUA in 2010, we have always envied the healthcare plans available to 102 members as compared to what the company offered, and wondered why we didn’t have the coverage and options that 102 members enjoyed.
UWUA System Local 102 President Travis Beck has been very welcoming and helpful to Local 304 as we begin this journey, and we will owe 102 many more thanks before we are done.
The process itself is all about participation. You will be receiving a questionnaire from Cowden to fill out and submit so that they have the data to shop the multitude of healthcare providers for a quote and options for the membership.
It DOES NOT matter if you are a dues paying member in good standing or not, or if you opt out of our current FE coverage for that which is available to your spouse through their employer (such as PEIA). It is vitally important that you fill out the questions and submit them so that we can have an honest snapshot of our membership and their family’s healthcare needs and to offer you, as a UWUA member, a competitive choice.
What is important is that we get an accurate quote for whatever plans available to our membership.
Those who have opted out of their union dues obligations will not have a vote in this, when the time comes to decide if this is what we want to do, but will still have the benefit of whatever plans are offered and that they choose to enroll in.
We have said it all along that being UNION is all about participation and at no time has YOUR individual participation been so important. If you want something better, you have to take ownership of whatever things you CAN control instead of just riding along.
Talk to one of the members who were at the meeting, and take action to help yourself and your Brothers and Sisters.
Click the above highlighted links for more information.
Understanding Grievances
For some, the thought of filing a grievance is intimidating.
Some of the things members fear are:
1. Appearing disloyal or ungrateful for their job.
2. Painting themselves as a target for retrobution by management.
3. Alienating their immediated supervisor.
4. Unsure of the grievance process.
5. Not sure of how their issue relates to the language in the CBA (contract).
What is a grievance?
A grievance is any any dispute that reasonably concerns the application, interpretation, or violation of a collective bargaining agreement, past practice, company rules, or statutory law.
What is grievable?
Answer: anything that happens at work- whether it is in the contract or not- is fair game for a grievance. If it affects your pay, working conditions, seniority, or any other mandatory subjects of bargaining that are in the contract, as well as any local, state, or federal laws; it is probably a grievable offense.
Why are grievances important?
Grievances protects, enforces, and defines the collective bargaining agreement you work under. Grievances are the way a union holds an employer to their obligations and responsibility to their worker, as agreed across the bargaining table.
You could have the strongest and best defined union contract in the world, but it is not worth anything if the membership is unwilling to hold the employer to their word.
Inversely, a CBA that may fall short in some important areas to the membership can be further defined and enforced to the satisfaction of the membership through the grievance and arbitration procedure.
Collective Bargaining Agreements are negotiated every 3-4 years. In the meantime, it is the the grievance and arbitration process that gives any CBA it’s value.
Who should I talk to if I think I have a grievance?
Your Shop Steward has recieved special training concerning the CBA, latest talks between your union and the company on various subjects, and specifically on processing and handling grievances.
When a Member Gets Hurt on the Job
The following is used with permission and UWUA Local 304’s grateful appreciation for our union Brothers and Sisters of the the UE (“UE” is the abbreviation for United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, a democratic national union representing some 35,000 workers in a wide variety of manufacturing, public sector and private non-profit sector jobs).
UWUA Local 304 would like to point out that the Union Stewards in the UE do much of the heavy lifting of representing the members, whereas in our Local this has fell primarily to the Executive Board. As a young Local, that was a decision of our local, however, it is the duty and responsibility of EVERY member to safeguard the health and safety of each other, as well as protecting members when they are injured on the job.
The UE’s mantra is; “The Members Run This Union”. We of UWUA Local 304 agree with this philosophy , as well as the precepts laid out in the following UE article presented, unedited and in its entirety below:
Issues
- Safeguarding our members from potential workplace hazards
- Ensuring proper medical treatment/filing an accident report
- Warning against employer tricks to avoid workers compensation
- Negotiating a “light duty” policy
- Employer Obligation to Provide a Safe & Healthy Workplace
Your responsibility as a steward
In 1996, 6.2 million workers were injured on the job. That’s 17,000 each day. In that same year, 6,112 were killed on the job, 154 every day! On top of those grisly facts is another: 50,000 workers die each year from occupational diseases.
As horrible as those figures are, they show progress. The number of workers killed on the job has dropped 67% since OSHA was started in 1970. The injury rate has dropped 31%. These figures are for the areas where OSHA was able to set some real standards – manufacturing and construction.
In the service industry, where the Republicans have held up the setting of OSHA standards, there has been no real decline in accidents since 1970. Congress has stopped the setting of any standards on repetitive motion injuries and these have increased in all areas of work, manufacturing, service and construction.
UE stewards have an important role to play in safeguarding our members from potential workplace hazards or when they get hurt on the job. Here are some pointers on what to look out for when a worker gets hurt on the job.
What Should a Steward Do When a Worker Gets Hurt?
The steward must make sure that the worker gets the proper medical treatment, if any is needed.
In some places the steward has had to intervene because the employer wanted to have an injured worker drug tested before they received medical treatment. Medical treatment comes first.
The steward must also see that a proper accident report is filed when a worker gets hurt, even if no medical treatment is necessary.
Why? If a proper report is not filed and later on a worker begins to suffer because of a workplace accident, the worker may have a hard time proving that their problems are related to a workplace injury. Employers hate to have workplace accidents reported because often times their insurance rates are based upon reported accidents. If the employer acts like they are going to blame the worker for the accident, the steward should make a note of any potential witnesses.
The steward should see that the worker is not talked into applying for sickness and accident payments instead of workers compensation payments.
Many employers try to talk workers into taking S&A instead of workers compensation. In the long run it is cheaper for the employer. We have to remind workers that by taking S&A, they are cutting themselves off from future workers compensation payments if the injury proves to be long lasting or reoccurring.
NOTE: The employer is responsible for seeing that workers receive workers compensation in a timely manner. Don’t let the boss claim that the “matter is out of my hands, go talk to the insurance company.” Many times stewards have found that the boss was secretly telling the insurance company to hold up workers compensation payments in an effort to starve the employee back to work. Keep the pressure on the employer.
Health and Safety is a Grievable Issue!
What About Light Duty?
Employers have seized upon the idea of providing “light duty” for workers, mostly to get them back to work, and thereby lowering their reports of long-term injuries.
The employer should negotiate with the union over the establishment of any “light duty” policy.
Because of the employer attacks on workers compensation laws through out the country, many workers cannot afford to stay out on workers compensation. While we understand their desire to return to work quickly, a steward may also have to point out to workers the long-term damage that they might incur by returning to work too soon.
Where performing light duty jobs is not required by state law, the union should insist that it is the employee’s doctor’s decision that is the deciding opinion. Some employers have gone to the extreme of just providing rooms where injured workers sit all day, doing nothing. This is wrong. Often times what a worker needs to recover is rest, not just for the injured part of the body, but for the whole body. Sitting in a room doing nothing is not the same as being home resting.
The employer really is hoping that the worker will get so bored that he or she will beg to be allowed to return to work, even against the doctor’s orders.
If the union negotiates a light duty policy with the employer, it will be the steward’s job to see that it is equally applied. The union has the right to know who the employer wants to bring into work for light duty and who the employer lets stay home.
Many UE contracts have clauses that say that the employer must provide workers with a safe and healthy workplace. In these cases it is very clear what clause of the contract to cite when writing up a grievance about unsafe conditions. If the contract does not have a specific clause concerning health and safety, a grievance can always be filed under the Recognition Clause of the contract. A grievance can also be filed stating that the employer is violating the General Duty Clause of OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration). In some states workers are covered by state OSHA laws. They also have this General Duty Clause. The General duty Clause of OSHA simply states that it is the obligation of the employer to provide a safe and healthy workplace for all employees.
If a worker gets injured and complaints had been previously lodged about the problem with the employer, file a grievance. The union needs to have a written record on cases of employer negligence.
Can a Steward File a Grievance If a Health and Safety Committee Exists?
Yes. Sometimes it is best to try to get the safety committee to take care of the problem, but the Union always has the right to file a grievance over health & safety problems. A grievance should be filed especially if the safety committee ignores the problem.
The stewards must educate and organize the membership to stop employers from paying bonuses or giving out prizes for not reporting accidents.
Employers continue to try to bribe workers to not report accidents. Most times they set up “safety bingo” games, where the prizes get larger every day or week there are no reported accidents. The idea is to get workers to put pressure on themselves and each other not to report accidents. Other employers offer cash bribes to each worker who has no accidents. The outcome is the same. They hope to bribe workers into not reporting or seeking treatment for workplace injuries. Our position should be that safety is not a game.
The steward may have to warn workers who are out from work about employer tricks to cut them off workers compensation.
Many employers routinely hire private investigators to spy on workers who are collecting workers compensation. They sneak around trying to take photos of workers to prove that their injuries or disease are fake. What should workers do to protect themselves? If a doctor prescribes light exercise for a worker who is out with a back injury, that worker should get it in writing from the doctor. These private spies love to take photos of workers doing light work, such as raking leaves. They then use these photos to disqualify the worker or have them fired.
What about part-time work? Many workers have part-time jobs. Tell them to get written clearance from their doctor that it is all right for them to work their part time job. The doctor’s note should say that the part- time work is such that it will not aggravate the injury.
The steward may also have to let the worker know what their responsibilities are to the employer.
In most states workers have to regularly update the employer about their condition and any expected return to work date. The steward should let the injured worker know this, BUT also urge the worker to report to the union any harassment he or she receives when reporting in to the employer. The employee may also be required to see a doctor of the employer’s choosing to confirm the employee’s doctor’s diagnosis. The steward should make sure that the union member knows this BUT also make sure that they know that they have the right to keep seeing a doctor of their own choosing.
NOTE: Workers Compensation laws are different in every state. Whenever possible each UE Local should have at least one person who is an “expert” on the exact laws.
Moving Forward With a New Attitude!
Your union has a lot going on. While we have bargained our next contract, waiting for results of past arbitration and preparing future ones, filing unfair labor practices against the company for unfairly jockeying schedules, updating our union’s By Laws, and finding us a new permanent union hall.
Most of all, we are done apologizing for being UNION, and it’s time the membership adopted a new attitude and make this union what we need it and want it to be. The most effective weapon organized labor has in it’s arsenal isn’t the backing of the National, or the lawyers on retainer, or the right to file charges; it is and always will be SOLIDARITY!
You want a better contract, then you have to pull together with everybody else to make it a reality and give our Bargaining Committee the support they need to bargain from a position of strength, knowing the membership has their backs.
While workers across the nation are fighting to bring a unions into their workplaces, there are many union members shamefully taking the road offered them by union busting state legislatures who pushed Right To Work laws on workers. Laws handcrafted by the nefarious American Legislative Exchange Council in nice little ready made packages to kill unions, prevailing wage, and other protections workers have taken for granted for decades.
UWUA Local 304 has to get organized and active in this fight because all of us, collectively, have too damned much to lose if we don’t
Many members are familiar with the United Mine Workers, and lament that we as Utility Workers, don’t strike the same kind of fear in the hearts of corporate America that the UMWA has. That wasn’t gave to the miners, they fought for it for decades. They didn’t ignore the boss when they committed gross violations of the C.B.A., they filed grievances, arbitrated, went to court, jail, and marched in solidarity.
The unions that work in our plant are carefully shielded from 304 members. Why?
That’s because many of the contractors we host in our plant have been union workers for a long time. Management’s worse fear is that Harrison employees learn and start to act like real union workers.
You don’t have to disrespect management, or be hard to work with, but you don’t have to live in fear of them either. You have rights as a union member, but it’s up to you to know and exercise those rights. This begins by knowing your Collective Bargaining Agreement, attending union meetings, and raising hell if you have too.
Right To Work was passed to destroy unions, but we are countering by getting stronger through organization and education of our members, and through cooperation and collaboration with other unions.
UWUA Local 304 Has a Home!
In an overwhelming majority, UWUA Local 304 members voted almost 4 to 1 to establish it’s 1st ever Union Hall home!
West Virginia’s White-Washed Heritage
The power of the media to shape public opinion has always been with us since the foundation of our state, as well as our country. You could liken our nation’s founding to a union organizing drive, with all the elements of an indifferent and unresponsive ruler, his cruel and brutal lackeys, brave agitators and organizers who speak out in speech and print against injustice, and those under the thumb of the ruler who dare rise and and demand a better lot in life.
West Virginia was born out of internal strife within our union of the United States due to inequalities between the wealth of the industrializing northern states and the predominantly agrarian, slave holding, southern states. The West Virginia economy was more tied to that of it’s northern neighbors of Ohio and Pennsylvania, so the newly hatched state sided with the Union, with it’s first capital established in our northern panhandle of Wheeling. The reality was that the divide in our country was a bleeding gash right across the middle of our state, with the first land battle famously being fought in Philippi.
No doubt had the Confederacy won, Virginia would have reasserted it’s control over it’s western rogue territory, or, had those forming our state had sided with the southerners, the battle lines for the Civil War would’ve been redrawn and the survival of West Virginia as a separate state would have been highly doubtful.
Since 1865, our state has yet to establish itself as an integral part of the fabric of America and distinguish itself with a unique culture and identity of our own. This despite the many famous people born in or with strong ties to our state. Educators Booker T. Washington and Henry Lois Gates; novelists like John Knowles, Stephen Coonts, or Jebediah Purdy; famed aviator Chuck Yeager, WWII Medal of Honor recipient Hershel “Woody” Williams, and Basil L. Plumley who featured prominently in the Vietnam War movie “We Were Soldiers“. We’ve had our share of other famed entertainers and sports figures. Coaches Lou Holtz, Jimbo Fisher, and Nick Saban all hail from West Virginia, as well as entertainers Steve Harvey, Ted Cassidy (Lurch from The Adams Family), Morgan Spurlock, John Corbett, Virginia Egnor (Dagmar), Conchata Ferrell, Kathy Mattea, Peter Marshall, as well as many others.
Sadly, if you ask someone unfamiliar with our state, they will inevitably identify us as progenitors of the Hatfields and McCoys. Those famed feuders have long, and wrongly, been stereotyped as backwards, uneducated, crude, hard-headed, moonshine drinking hillbillies. Anybody actually familiar with the circumstances of the troubles between the two families know it was a tale that included politics, business, and power between two determined and shrewd patriarchs of rugged pioneering dynasties in direct opposition to each other.
That’s where the story of West Virginia ends, as far as what the rest of the country is concerned. The media has portrayed us by those long set preconceptions, as we labored quietly powering the country by harvesting and selling off our abundant natural resources, with the hard work of our fellow Mountaineers.
But why quietly?
It has been said that history is written by the victors, which explains why no other perspective has ever been offered to counter the notion of violent and stand-offish inbreds who sit around on their front porch spitting tobacco and taking potshots at neighbors as well as strangers who dare enter their domain.
Truth is, the Hatfields and McCoys are a relatively harmless and safe piece of our heritage that the media has edited, massaged, and expounded on for easy consumption by the American public. It’s a multi-layered story that can be safely tapped into to siphon off profit in literature, movies, and by marketing the lore surrounding those colorful characters involved in the long running dispute.
True West Virginia heritage and culture is firmly rooted in America’s labor history and unions. It’s a taboo subject that those of power and influence have sought to erase, hide, or gloss over in our society.That’s why you get Hatfields and McCoys, not Frank Keeney and Fred Mooney, you get Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson and not “General” Bill Blizzard, you get the “Mothman” and not “Mother” Mary Harris Jones. On a larger scale, there have been a multitude of movies depicting the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, but only one notable film that depicts the Matewan Massacre; plenty of gangster movies showing one group of mobsters against another, while The Battle of Blair Mountain remains shrouded in murky history and legend. They give you Jesse James, when what our nation sorely needs is Sid Hatfield, who battled and died in the service of others and not for his own enrichment; sure, everyone knows the names Al Capone and John Dillinger, but not John L. Lewis, Eugene V. Debbs, or Joe Hill.
So why is such an important piece of our West Virginia, as well as American, heritage being suppressed?
It’s because the “great” industrialists who wrongly get the credit for building our country wish it so. Men like Andrew Carnegie of US Steel, or John D. Rockefeller of Standard Oil, Financier Jay Gould, J.P. Morgan, the Vanderbilt railroad empire, Henry Ford, and many others and their sycophants would have to answer for the crimes they either perpetrated themselves or, as more the case, had their heavily bribed and corrupt politicians, policemen, and thugs. Heavy-handed Baldwin-Felts detectives the coal mines employed as private security, as well as enforcers, and more the same for the Pinkerton Detectives. If these forces were too small, the rich could always rely on a corrupted county or statehouse to dispatch Sheriffs Deputies and their posses, the State Police, and even the National Guard to beat back workers who refused to be shackled into economic and perpetual slavery at the hands of their employers.
A shameful number of men, women and children were assaulted, maimed, starved, or killed at the hands of employers they served. Here in West Virginia, mothers and fathers were thrown out into the street with all their belongings and left to the mercy of the elements because someone told a gun thug the worker possessed, talked about, or supported the union. These families were forced to the backs of hollers with nothing between them and nature but a thin canvas tent. In those small clusters many died of starvation, disease, exposure, or the frequent bullets that seemed to always be flying around.
Whether it was the Pullman Strike, the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. the Haymarket Riots, the Paint Creek and Cabin Creek strike, the Ludlow Massacre, or many other major eruptions of frustrated and desperate workers, the masters of business and industry would have a lot to answer for. The indiscriminate beatings, destruction of property, denial 
of constitutionally granted rights, subversion, spying, and almost any other indignity that can or can’t even be imagined.
The war goes on today. Powerful forces have used their media mouthpieces, slick political lapdogs, and vast sums of money to pit neighbor against neighbor, American against American, and justify their treachery both in court and in front of the news cameras. All the while they incrementally push the working class closer and closer to the coal camps they left only a couple of generations ago, while proclaiming themselves servants and pillars of Christianity.
How bad is it?
The tern “redneck” used to refer to the red kerchiefs strikers wore to recognize friends from foes, but now it’s used in a derogatory sense to indicate the ignorant and uncouth. They call trade unionists communists, socialists, and/or fascist to the point that, though describing different political philosophies, the words have mutated into synonyms for each other.
To clear this up, a fascist is one man at the top calling the shots and holding all the wealth themselves. A communist believes no one should be rich, A capitalist believes in oligarchy, made up of many want to be fascist willing to sacrifice anybody as long as it increases their coffers. A socialist has no problem with people being rich, they just believe in a wealthy society no one should be so poor that they cannot live.
Before unions, every employer was a fascist; “my way or the highway.”
Many try to paint unionism as socialist or communism (which is not true since you can’t be either and belong to an American union), but what unions actually do is bring democracy to the shop floor, for every worker equally.
To fight this trend, working people have to actively search and study their missing heritage for themselves and reclaim the rights granted them by the blood and tears shed by men, women, and children for all workers to have a better life for them and their families.
Let this be your New Years resolution!
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Things You Need to Know about “Right to Work”
So far, 28 states have enacted RTW (Right To Work) laws, predominantly in the South and Southwest. While right-to-work laws have nothing to do with rights, work, or guaranteeing jobs for workers, some in the business community view it as a strategy for attracting new businesses to locate in West Virginia, despite its downside risks of lowering wages and hurting unions that helped build the middle class in our country.
Here are five important things you need to know:
1. It’s about lowering wages and eroding workplace protections. As an economic development tool, the professed aim of RTW is to reduce the power of unions by depriving them of resources (dues), which ultimately weakens the union and strengthens the employers’ hand in bargaining for lower pay and benefits. By decreasing the likelihood that businesses will have to negotiate with their workers, this will lower labor costs, reduce the cost of doing business, and will supposedly be an incentive for out-of-state manufacturers and other businesses to locate in West Virginia. If RTW didn’t lower wages and weaken workplace protections across the board, there would be no incentive for companies to move to West Virginia. This, in a nutshell, is the hope of RTW supporters such as the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce.
2. Academic research is unanimous that RTW reduces unionization. While there is no strong evidence that RTW laws help or harm a state’s economy, there is a broad academic consensus that it weakens labor unions. If this happens, it could mean even worse economic and social outcomes in the state. This is because unionization is strongly associated with higher economic mobility, less income inequality, higher wages, safer workers conditions, better benefits and larger voter turnout.
3. The WVU report on RTW is fundamentally flawed. While a recent study by John Deskins at West Virginia University concluded that RTW would boost jobs in West Virginia, the study is fraught with basic design problems. For example, the WVU study misidentifies that Texas and Utah adopted RTW in the 1990s, when both states adopted RTW before 1960. The WVU study also failed to adopt a standard academic practice that accounts for unobserved differences between states, such as the advent of air-conditioning in the South, access to oversees markets, and other important state characteristics. When researchers at the Economic Policy Institute accounted for these problems and replicated WVU’s findings, they found no relationship between RTW status and employment growth. Tim Bartik, an economist with the Upjohn Institute and one of the country’s leading economic development experts, recently reviewed the WVU study and concluded that it “does not provide any convincing evidence that a state that adopts RTW laws will, as a result, experience faster job growth.” The flaws with the WVU study highlight why state policymakers should not rely on its conclusions to adopt RTW.
4. RTW is not about “workplace freedom.” While RTW proponents define ‘workplace freedom” as letting workers opt out of paying a representation fee to pay for the benefits they are receiving under any negotiated union contract, most would define workplace freedom as being treated with dignity and respect on the job. That means getting paid an honest wage for an honest day’s work, and having access to benefits such as paid sick days, paid family leave, health care, and a retirement plan. The only freedom workers would receive if RTW were enacted is the ability to get something for nothing.
5. Low workforce skills are the central reason for West Virginia’s economic woes, not lack of RTW. A recent in-depth study by the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Kentucky that explored why the state is so poor found that the shortage of skilled workers – not RTW – was the central reason for the state’s relative poor economic performance. Since West Virginia faces many of the same social and economic problems as Kentucky, policymakers would be well advised to promote polices that improve the skills of the state’s workforce instead of RTW that could reduce workforce training.
The legislature in West Virginia must learn that we can’t build West Virginia by tearing down working families and unions. Instead we need to focus on the policies that we know work, such investing in early childhood education, research and development, higher education, workforce training, and effective ways to help more people get out of poverty.
Who Would Do Such A Thing?
The effects of West Virginia’s so called “Right To Work” are creeping into unions across our state. “Right To Work” is often translated as “Right To Work For Less”, and is often pointed out as a law that confers no rights, or provides no work.
The sole purpose of “Right To Work” is to weaken workers bargaining power by attacking the “closed shop” concept, whereas all employees must be part of the union in a defined bargaining unit. In other words, if you benefit by working under a collective bargaining unit, then you are obligated by being a dues paying union member. “Right To Work” introduces division within a union by allowing members to opt out of their financial obligation to the union while still reaping the benefits of working under a collective bargaining agreement and having access to use the grievance procedure. Though they can’t run for a position as a union officer, or vote for or against those who do, they get to “ride along” for free.
Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of labor history, especially right here in West Virginia, may wonder why anyone would choose NOT to be a full and supportive member of a union.
After all, “who would do such a thing?”
To answer that, you have to understand the hateful and racist origins of “Right To Work”.
The idea for modern Right-to-Work laws came from Dallas Morning News’s William Ruggles, who, on Labor Day 1941, published an editorial calling for the national prohibition of the closed union shop. Ruggles was soon visited by a bombastic Texas oil man by the name of Vance Muse and secured the writer’s blessing for his Christian American Association to launch a campaign to outlaw contracts that required employees to belong to unions. Ruggles was the one who suggested to Muse a name for such legislation—Right-to-Work.
Muse placed Right-to-Work on the conservatives’ political agenda of the Christian American Association. You have to understand that Vance Muse was described as a larger-than-life Texan whose own grandson described him as “a white supremacist, an anti-Semite, and a Communist-baiter, a man who beat on labor unions not on behalf of working people, as he said, but because he was paid to do so.”
It’s not coincidental that Right-to-Work took firm and early root in the Jim Crow south. In those states, few blacks could cast free ballots, poll taxes prevented most working-class whites from voting, election fraud was rampant, and political power was concentrated in the hands of an elite. Right-to-Work laws sought to make it stay that way, to deprive the least powerful of a voice, and to make sure that workers remained divided along social and racial lines.
Vance Muse attracted national attention through his work with the (pre-Koch brothers) Southern Committee to Uphold the Constitution, which sought to deny Roosevelt’s re-nomination in 1936 on grounds that the New Deal threatened the South’s racial order and made a lucrative living lobbying throughout the south on behalf of corporate interests or, in the words of one of his critics, “playing rich industrialists as suckers.” Over the course of his career, he fought women’s suffrage, worked to defeat the proposed constitutional amendment prohibiting child labor, lobbied for high tariffs, and sought repeal of the eight-hour workday law for railroaders.
Since then, Right To Work has been the centerpiece for the richest supporters to destroy unions. Through heavily, and mostly secretly, funded mercenary agents like The National Right To Work Foundation, shadowy unscrupulous union-busters, The American Legislative Council (ALEC), and even local Chambers of Commerce’s in every American city they have massaged, camouflaged, and marketed Right To Work to the point of making it seem like a reasonable and legitimate political policy that empowers workers and hold unions accountable. The truth is that RTW is still the dirty and disgraceful concoction of the elite to deny those who built their fortunes a fair share in those benefits and profits.
These are the same people who, less than a couple of generations ago, had our fore bearers living in company houses, on company land, shopping at the company store, and using company issued scrip. They cheated many of our ancestors out of their land, which was settled and tamed by their families, all to get rich on mining the coal that lay deep in the ground.
Did these speculators feel any remorse?
No, because that’s the way they think it should be.
We now come to where we are at today. Right To Work is on the books of at least 28 states, union density has steadily declined to a fraction of what is was a generation ago, and workers wages, benefits, pensions, and safety are under assault like never before.
There is hope. Workers are starting to take notice of the role they play in our nation’s social fabric, and are deeply unsatisfied with taking concessions, the instability in their workplace, pensions being legally stolen or curtailed, and those in power, both politically and economically, get richer while everyone else gets left behind. Workers are once again turning to unions to stem the tide against them.
The greatest power a union has is solidarity, when all members stand together in a united front, but, just as it was meant, Right To Work brings divisiveness into that very fabric that makes a union a union.
Those in charge have always been able to find those who are union in name only and play upon their ambitions and lack of intelligence and critical thinking skills to weaken a union.
Collectively, unions simply call them, “rats”.
Like a rodent, these workers work only for their own desires and will gnaw at the union base by offering themselves as a conduit for those in charge to spread disinformation, slander, rumors, as well as acting as a spy for management.
Right To Work gives these folks. who usually like to work under the radar and in the dark, an opportunity to openly declare themselves as enemies of the union, out for only themselves. They are willing to accept all the benefits of a collective bargaining agreement while not supporting or contributing to the union.
They become , “free-riders”.
This lack of honor, integrity, and ethics is the antithesis of what unions stand for. We stand for acting ethically, with integrity, and the sole solid purpose of protecting our members through a fraternity of union Brothers and Sisters who look out for each other, respect each other, and defend each other.
At some point, every union member has to ask themselves, “where do I stand.”
Unions hope your answer is shoulder to shoulders with all workers, for the benefit of all who labor for a living.
UWUA To Stay at Harrison!
Once again, Harrison Power Station employees sent a clear message to anyone who was listening that Harrison is a UNION station! In a mail in vote counted October 14th, 2021, Harrison workers gave the UWUA a clear and decisive 85 to 53 mandate as our collective bargaining representative.
This is the SECOND attempt to decertify 304, and like the first, this one also failed. UWUA Local 304 wishes to THANK those members who’ve invested their trust in us, and hope to earn the same loyalty and respect from those who did not vote with 304.
