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| Amazing Vote — Workers at Stanley subcontractors Choctaw Archiving and Northrop Grumman in California celebrate winning their own local union. The combined vote total was 228-51. |
UE today won two more organizing victories among contract workers for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service Centers (USCIS). Workers employed by Choctaw Archiving at the Laguna Niguel, California center voted 124 to 11 for UE representation — an astonishing margin of more than 11 to 1! Voting at the same time, workers employed by Northrop Grumman, also at Laguna Niguel, chose UE representation by a decisive 105 to 40 margin. Both employers are subcontractors for Stanley Associates.
John Jeffrey, a member of the organizing committee at Choctaw, said workers at the California center are "ecstatic" at the outcome, "especially with the margin of victory at Northrop Grumman." Workers on the organizing committee were confident of winning Choctaw, so they focused their attention on Northrop Grumman in the final days before the vote.
Jeffrey says that workers are especially happy because the size of their margin of victory "will increase our bargaining power." Jeffrey, who has nearly two years' service and was one of many workers who suffered a pay cut when the new contractors took over the center in December, says the pay cuts "were a bit of an incentive" for organizing and contributed to the overwhelming margins of victory. The other factor was the effort of organizing committee members. "We worked hard and never let up until we had the yes votes."
'We Believe ...'
During the California workers' post-election party, we also spoke to Aileen Kim, a Northrop Grumman worker. "We're very happy here — having a celebration." She said the company tried to convince people that the union couldn't do anything for them, "but we believe the union can do something for us." Her explanation for the overwhelming vote for the union: "We have lot of issues."
Daphne Carreon, a Stanley worker at the Laguna Niguel center, is confident of another UE win coming next Thursday, March 6, when the California Stanley unit votes. "After these other three companies voted this way," — the three groups of subcontract workers at her center who have so far voted for UE — "it helps us. I'm sure our co-workers from the other companies will help us to win, too."
So far UE has won five out of seven in this series of organizing elections that began on January 31, adding more than 500 workers who are now represented by UE. UE now represents a majority of workers at the Vermont and California USCIS Centers, and, says UE Director of Organization Bob Kingsley, "The union intends to move ahead and forcefully bargain for these newest UE members." At the California center, UE has won all three elections so far. Two additional units in California are yet to vote: Stanley on March 6 and Altron on March 20.
Voting the same day as the two California groups, the organizing drive of workers in St. Albans, Vermont employed by lead contractor Stanley Associates had an outcome that is, at this point, inconclusive. There were 60 votes for UE, 80 votes for the employer, and 21 votes were cast subject to challenge and have not yet been counted. Of the Vermont vote, Bob Kingsley said, "I applaud the courage of the 60 Stanley workers in Vermont who stood up for justice in the face of an overwhelming employer assault."
The anti-union attack by Stanley in Vermont, which eroded a strong majority sign-up for UE, shows not only what's wrong with the system of U.S. labor law, but the larger problem of corrupt corporate domination of the federal government in Washington. One sign of that corruption is the "revolving door" where high-ranking government officials end up lobbying for the same corporations they were previously supposed to regulate.
In the case of Stanley, its union-busting campaign and its legal representation before the NLRB were directed by Jack Toner, the former Executive Secretary of the NLRB — the federal agency that is supposed to protect workers' right to organize. Toner was able to stall the NLRB-supervised election by a month, which gave Stanley extra time to conduct an intensive campaign of intimidation, captive audience meetings, one-on-one sessions in which bosses browbeat workers, and a wide range of threats. Through this reign of workplace terror, Stanley managed to scare many of its workers into voting against their own interests.