Union Fires Its Own Workers For Trying To Organize A Union

Unions Play by Other Rules

The United Food & Commercial Workers International has been trying for years to unionize Walmart workers, and, strangely enough, it employed organizers to help accomplish that task who were not members of any union. When those employees decided to organize their own group into a union, they reached out to their colleagues at UFCW to find out why they were not covered by the same labor contract as other UFCW employees. And for their activism and efforts they were summarily fired!

“As union organizers, it’s our job to teach people about their labor rights and how to be more effective at Walmart,” said one of the fired UFCW employees, who did not want to be identified.

The UFCW “is all for workers’ rights yet it denied its own staff union contracts and didn’t pay us overtime and eventually fired us for reaching out to a union,” the ousted worker said.

A senior UFCW official on Wednesday referred questions about the firings to its OUR Walmart campaign directors at the time.

Two campaign directors who oversaw the allegedly ousted workers were themselves fired in June 2015. That pair would have been responsible for any actions against their staff organizers, the UFCW official said.

The fired employees weren’t temps, rather they had worked full-time for three years.

The fired workers earned about $10,000 a year less than their unionized peers in the same office, the ousted worker said. They also were denied overtime pay and regularly worked 50-hour weeks.

Before they were fired, they organized a big push at Walmart in preparation for a rolling strike across the country in June 2014.

“The three of us got the turnout of Walmart workers in Seattle who were part of the strike,” said one of the Seattle employees. “The next week they fired us.”

Once again we see that the left wants to require others how to manage their businesses and their lives, but exempt themselves from whatever it is they demand of everyone else. And one other lesson is abundantly clear in this curious tale, and that is that unions are not your friend, and they can turn on you at a moment’s notice. It seems that the days of thuggish union activities run by mob style tactics are not far behind us, and actually may still be around if you look hard enough.

Source: nypost.com