Massachusetts AFL-CIO President Robert Haynes (left).

Amanda Montgomery, a communications and research coordinator, and John Drinkwater, an organizing and mobilizing coordinator, describe a rally by union activists and allies outside a union-busting seminar. 

More than 50 workers and union leaders turned out at 7 a.m. yesterday to protest a union-busting seminar at the Sheraton Commander Hotel in Cambridge, Mass. Local employers paid $500 per attendee to the anti-union consulting firm HR Hero to spend a full day learning union-busting tactics from consultants who make their living by denying workers the opportunity to improve their own lives by joining a union. (Check out photos of the event here.)

Stewart Acuff, former organizing director and now assistant to the president of the AFL-CIO, blasted those inside the seminar who prefer to pay exorbitant fees to shameless consultants rather than putting money in the pockets of workers. Acuff framed the current economic hardship of many Americans in the context of union-busting:

We have a crisis in America, and in our economy and it is a direct result of 30 years of intentional, strategic, consistent, ongoing union-busting, and we’ve got to stop it, and it starts right here.

The rally was not only a protest against the billion-dollar union-busting cottage industry but a call for the passage of the federal Employee Free Choice Act, which Acuff points out

will establish that a worker should be able to join a union just like a boss can join the Chamber of Commerce: simply by signing a card. And when 50 percent plus one sign that card, the union will be established and certified and bargaining must begin.

To learn more about the Employee Free Choice Act, click here.

Massachusetts AFL-CIO President Robert Haynes, who grew up in Cambridge, spoke about his pride in the city’s values, values that are contrary to those of highly paid consultants teaching employers how to bust unions and take away basic human rights.

We are here today to express our dissatisfaction with these firms for denying workers their basic human right to join a union…to provide for their families with good wages, and healthcare and retirement security. That’s why we’re here and we’re going to be heard.”

State Sen. Anthony Galluccio, a legislator from Cambridge with a 100 percent labor voting record, strongly objected to employers in his district learning how to take away the rights of his constituents:

Anytime that any group comes in this city and trains people to bust unions, we are going to let them know that they are not welcome in this city.

Inside the seminar, the keynote presentation was given by attorneys from the union-busting Massachusetts law firm, Skoler, Abbott & Presser. The firm conducted anti-union campaigns during two separate organizing drives by UAW Local 2322, at the YWCA of western Massachusetts and the Hampshire Educational Collaborative (HEC).

The firm raked in nearly $400,000 between the two campaigns, but the employers would have been better off simply respecting the legal right of their workers to choose a union. Workers at the YWCA and HEC both voted overwhelmingly to join Local 2322, in spite of the intimidation and harassment faced by union supporters.

Ron Patenaude, president of UAW Local 2322, and Bob Simons, a union activist and worker at the Hampshire Educational Collaborative, spoke to the crowd about the shameful tactics used by the nonprofit YWCA and HEC, which they learned from and operated under the guidance of Skoler, Abbott & Presser.

Ron Patenaude pointed out that union-busting is a multibillion-dollar industry, with much of that money coming from the nonprofit and charitable industry. He asked why nonprofit organizations, whose mission is often to serve their communities, would pay money to outside consultants rather than their own workers:

Empty suits make hundreds of dollars an hour, while workers are often not even paid a living wage. It has to stop now and that’s why we’re here today.

Bob Simons, a 10 year employee of HEC, added:

I’m here today to protest what I believe is a despicable practice: firms like this undermining a worker’s right to organize and bargain for better wages and benefits. It has to stop, and I hope that the employee Free Choice Act is enacted so other workers don’t have to go through what me and my co-workers went through.

Also speaking at the rally was Edwin Argueta, an organizer with Massachusetts Jobs with Justice.

Over the next several months, the many labor activists who protested against union-busters will work hard to elect a new Congress that will pass the Employee Free Choice Act. Sen. Barack Obama, as president of the United States, has pledged to sign the Employee Free Choice Act into law.

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