Union organizer sees surge of interest

http://www.azstarnet.com/business/255275

By Dan Sullivan
Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 09.01.2008

Kathy Tiihonen has been an organizer for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 104 for eight years. Before that, she was a bus driver with Sun Tran for 10 years.
She became an organizer, she said, because she had struggled as a single mother and wanted to share the benefits she had gained from joining a union.

Here are excerpts of an interview Friday:
Q: What's the biggest problem facing Teamsters members?
A: It's the same problem as it has always been — weak labor laws. They're weak laws or no laws at all to actually protect workers.

Q: What has been the biggest hurdle you have faced while organizing?
A: Companies do not abide by the laws that are set out for workers so that they can organize. There's no real incentives for companies to abide by the rule because it doesn't make any difference. At best they have to stick a piece of paper on the wall that says, "We won't do it."

Q: What is the union's biggest issue going into the presidential election?
A: The Employee Free Choice Act. It's legislation that protects workers' rights through forming a union. Where if a majority of workers sign a card saying, "We want to be a union," instead of going through a four- to six-week period of getting beat up by the company and threatened, they just get recognized and sit down and negotiate.

FULL story at link.