Another Victory! Welcome Cedar Hill, TX members!

Another Victory! Welcome Cedar Hill, TX members!

The team at the Wells Fargo branch in Cedar Hill, Texas won their election today, making them the newest members of WFWU-CWA and the 8th branch to form a union at Wells Fargo! 

As new union members, they are immediately afforded additional protections on the job even before their contract is negotiated, including the right to have a union representative present as a witness and advocate in any disciplinary meetings. As CWA members, they are also eligible for perks like union programs for college degrees, discounts, or other benefits. 

And yesterday, the team at the Highland Avenue National City Branch in California delivered their union announcement letter to their branch manager and filed for a petition with the National Labor Relations Board to conduct a union election.

Belleview, Florida also held their election earlier this week, resulting in a tie between “yays” and “nays.” Since a majority is required to win a union election, Belleview will unfortunately not be joining the union, but we do want to thank everyone there who organized and fought hard for a voice on the job. Standing up is never easy, and we know Wells Fargo has been ramping up their efforts to pressure us into voting no. Branches with upcoming elections need our support now more than ever to know they are not in this alone!

Here are additional branches with scheduled votes coming up. Please express your solidarity and share your support:

• Apex, North Carolina on Wednesday, April 10
• Bradenton, Florida on Tuesday, April 16

To get started organizing your branch or non-branch department, contact an organizer here.

Further Reading

• “Unions are not only good for workers, they’re good for communities and for democracy,” Economic Policy Institute 
• “American Companies Have Always Been More Anti-Union Than International Ones. Here’s Why,” TIME

VIDEO: Confessions of a Union Buster

“The most effective weapon you have to bust a union-buster is exposure.” Marty Levitt was a famous union buster who devoted the last years of his life trying to make amends for the many years he spent scaring workers into not forming a union. He wrote a book, Confessions of a Union Buster, that pulled back the curtain on the multi-million dollar business of union-avoidance consultants hired by companies like Wells Fargo to spread misinformation. Here is a video of Marty explaining how to expose and defeat the “union buster.”

Question of the Week: Why do companies hire union busters?

We’ve talked about some of the common strategies deployed by companies during union-busting campaigns, but why is it they run these campaigns in the first place? No matter how they would like to present it, companies like Wells Fargo don’t hire union busting consultants and pay them millions of dollars to do unbiased educational outreach to employees on the pros and cons of unions. They hire them to spread fear and misinformation to confuse and divide workers so they get distracted from the goal of gaining a voice on the job. Corporate executives will spend millions of dollars on expensive attorneys and consultants to try to make workers feel confused, worried, divided, or generally stressed out so they can maintain complete power and control over employees’ working conditions. 

Over the past forty years, corporate executives in the United States have grown increasingly brazen in their anti-union efforts, especially compared to how companies in most other industrialized countries behave. Union busters as paid consultants do not exist in Europe, Japan, or Australia. “Unions aren’t just about higher wages. They are very much about workers having a say about what happens in the workplace. And that’s what employers don’t like,” said Ileen Devault, a professor of labor history at Cornell University’s Industrial and Labor Relations School, in an interview with Time Magazine.  

What really scares companies about unions isn’t really about the cost of providing higher wages or better benefits that are won during negotiations, it’s about the loss of power and control. After all, one of the tactics used during union busting campaigns is to give a small raise or fix a few key issues to show employees they are “listening” and don’t need to unionize.  But once workers stand together in  solidarity, like Wells Fargo workers are doing in greater numbers every day, the workplace transforms from a dictatorship —one where they have complete control — into a democracy where they have to be accountable for their actions and the promises they make to workers.

Feel like they are getting in your head? Take this short knowledge quiz and get back to the facts of the matter. Talk to your coworkers about how you are feeling. They want us to be divided and fearful. We can overcome that by finding strength in each other, sticking together and being there for one another.