Erie, PA Grocery Worker Fired for trying to organize

[Sherman A1]

The Poll on the station's page could use all the DU help it can get!


From the UFCW Facebook Page

Earlier this week a grocery worker in Erie, PA was FIRED for daring to stand up and try to organize his fellow workers. Channel 12 in Erie is running a poll asking if the worker deserves support. Please chime in for our brave brother! The poll is on the right side of the page towards the bottom.

WICU12 Erie PA
www.wicu12.com
Erie's Number One News Source


http://www.wicu12.com/

[MadHound]

1. Depending upon Eric's actions and state laws,

Eric might just have won the lawsuit lottery. As far as I know, it is still illegal to fire somebody for trying to unionize a plant. Granted, you can't do it on the clock, and other legal niceties have to be followed, but if Eric played the game by the rules, then he has an excellent chance of a fat payoff from that store.

[Brickbat]

2. He just better hope he's never been late for a shift by two minutes, or anything like that.

If he's organizing and they want to fire him, they'll find a way.

[MadHound]

3. Oh I understand that, I've gone through the wringer of organizing a plant a couple of times

But generally, when you contact your local to get started, they go through all these basics when you start. Hopefully Eric took that advice to heart and minded his P's and Q's.

[Dont_Bogart_the_Pretzel]

5. But in Texas they have a "Right to work" which means you can be fired for anything.

[Subdivisions]

4. I was fired from my job in 1997 for attempting to organize the company I worked for...

The union came calling on us during off-work hours and I liked what I heard. So, we arranged a meeting for a Saturday (not a work day) at the home of one of the other employees who happens to have been my best friend at the time. The meeting was to vote whether or not we wanted to go union and only 5 votes were needed to force a contract with the company. And all five votes were present for this meeting. The motion carried. When we got to work on Monday, we were all fired.

Moments later, we called an emergency meeting with the union rep at a local restuarant and made him buy us all lunch (and margaritas). We were all asked to write a statement, which we did. We then asked the union guy when he could put us to work. He said he didn't know. We demanded that we be put to work immediately. However, those of us who would've joined as journeyman (based on our on-the-job experience) had to accept that we could not be put to work until a union executive board and body vote could be held. So, we started our own company and did sub-contracting work for a few weeks while the union got their formalities done. Those employees that were not to be journeyman were immediately employed and offered apprenticeships.

Meanwhile, the union rep took our statements to the National Labor Relations Board. We each had to go to the local NLRB office to make our formal statements and to testify as to what had happened at our previous job. The NRLB said we had a winnable case.

The entire process took nearly three months. Those of us who were working for ourselves in the interim were doing fairly well. Then the call came for us to attend a regular union members' meeting. We were told there that the union's executive board had voted not to grant us our journeyman status due to technicalities in our experience verifications. Then, the union rep that had worked for us all along and carried considerable weight in the local stated that the EB could be overuled by a member vote. He then began to recite the story of what we had been through and what we had done in the interim in order to organize the company and our commitment to the efforts of the union and our desire to become members. He then called for a vote as to whether or not we should be accepted as journeyman members.

That night we became full-fledged union journeymen earning journeyman wages. A bit later word came down from the NLRB: we had won our case and the company was found in violation of labor laws and was required to pay fines and they were required to pay each of us back-pay for every hour missed since being fired. For me, that was nearly $7,000. And I went from making $13/hr at that company to earning $21/hr (bring home; with benefits the hourly rate was almost $27/hr) as a union journeyman. And I've been a member ever since.

[provis99]

6. Pennsylvania's Open Workforce Initiative means you can be fired for anything.

Dude is out of luck.