Disrespect in the Workplace Leads Workers to Organize

When people ask me why workers need unions, I can answer in one word - respect. My experience with local 78, asbestos, lead and hazardous waste workers and other workers trying to organize showed quintessential case in point.

When the reduction of workers to asbestos in New York first organized, our demands went beyond the basic salary and compensation issues that are typically associated with unions. We wanted better pay, but more than anything else, what fueled the organizing campaign was our need to respect the universal can be treated by our bosses as another human being, not just the production unit.

New York City asbestos industry was almost completely free of unions, when workers International Union of North America to target for unionization in 1995. Almost all workers in the industry are immigrants, mainly from Eastern Europe and Latin America. We did not speak English, and many of us were undocumented.

Supervisors, meanwhile, almost all born Amerikanac.Vlast is dynamic so tilted in favor of heads of working conditions and the level of disrespect has reached unsustainable levels. Supervisors turned the working space in their own little fiefdom.

Asbestos is a decrease in physically demanding and dangerous work. In 1995, the going rate is $ 12 per hour, without benefits. In the meantime, construction workers who work in the same building were making five or six times. Shifts often lasted twelve to sixteen hours, and the only mention of the word "overtime" will be fired.

Supervisors are various methods of squeezing as much production from the workers as much as possible. Some supervisors made ​​us wear numbers on the outside of our suits. If they saw a worker resting or slacking off the slightest bit, they will call your number. This meant that you were fired.

Other supervisors divided workers into pairs so that each pair a specific area for removal. At the end of each day, a couple who has done the least work was told not to return. If it is legal and economically advantageous to brand us, there are some supervisors who might have done.

The most serious manifestation of this disrespect, supervisors often reduced or even ignored the health risks posed by azbest.Veliki part of every project reduce asbestos is committed to protecting the public and workers from exposure to asbestos.

These measures, while necessary, are expensive for the contractor. To get the job done quickly and cheaply, supervisors would taunt a precaution, putting workers in grave danger. Often we do not wear full face masks because it slowed down our production. Of course, these masks are "side effects" of protecting us from inhaling asbestos fibers.

Working under these conditions on a daily basis, we were eager to begin to organize workers when representatives came knocking. Hundreds of workers now have a commitment to fight for better conditions and signed union authorization cards.

After months of job actions, the campaign came to a climax in the strike in the Exxon building in midtown Manhattan in February 1996. Through the snow and cold, hundreds of workers marched against contractor Asbestos Containment Services Inc., calling for an end to disrespect, low pay and dangerous conditions. Despite frenzied efforts by the contractor, we maintained our unity and maintain the line.

By the time the snow began to melt, we went back to work, but only after the balance of power has dramatically changed. We returned to the trade unions signed an agreement setting up rules of employment, and the shop steward and union representatives whose job was to enforce the contract and represent us collectively.

After the campaign, LIUNA sent me to Alabama and North Carolina to help in the campaign to organize poultry processing workers. It was there that I came to realize that our situation in New York was not unique. While the chicken plant workers complained about low pay, more than anything else we talked about not being allowed to take bathroom breaks.

How much would cost the company to allow workers to a five-minute break? But this is not about reducing troškova.Tvrtka denied the workers this basic human decency because they only saw production units, closer to machines or work animals, but as men and women.

As long as the bosses write the rules of employment, there will be abuse of power like those suffered by asbestos workers in New York City and chicken processing workers in North Carolina and Alabama. Wherever people are treated not as fellow human beings, but as cogs in the production of machinery, they will come together and fight for more control over their working conditions. This is the essence of labor unions.