Taxes for union busting
http://www.salon.com/2012/04/25/taxes_for_union_busting/
On April 4, Barbara Harms boss forced her to attend a meeting about why she shouldnt join a union. The two-hour, on-the-clock meeting was run by Michael Penn, a professional anti-union consultant. Harms says Penn told workers that youre going to sign your life away if you sign a union card
the union would tell you to go out on strike
the place could close down. The meeting left Harms and other pro-union workers frustrated and angry. Especially because their taxes made it possible.
Harms works at the National Benefits Center (NBC) office in Lees Summit, Mo. Shes not directly employed by the federal government but is, instead, a contractor. She is one of about 800 workers there employed by the British company Serco, or Sercos subcontractors, to process immigration paperwork under Sercos contract with the federal government ($190 million a year, as of 2009). Penn, meanwhile, is a partner at the anti-union firm Crossroads Group. According to the most recent contract he filed with the Department of Labor (for a different client), his services cost $350 an hour. Serco presumably paid for Penns time out of its own pocket. But taxpayers paid for the facilities from office space to audiovisual equipment he used to campaign against the union.
Like Harms, many Americans would resent the prospect of taxpayer dollars, or taxpayer-funded resources, being deployed to bust a union drive. President Obama once seemed to be against it, as well. In his first month in office, President Obama signed an executive order apparently aimed at similar situations. Obamas order forbids government reimbursement for the costs of any activities undertaken to persuade employees
to exercise or not to exercise
the right to organize and bargain collectively.
But as Serco and its subcontractors fight to stay union free at the NBC, workers and union staffers say the order has meant less than theyd hoped. And despite Obamas order, the government says that Serco can use government facilities to fight unionization without breaking the law. Now, some union activists are questioning whether Obamas support for them is as firm as it once seemed. We have an executive order that sounds good, says Chris Townsend, the political action director for the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE). But I am yet to be convinced that [it] amounts to anything.