2005 Grinch of the Year NominEEs

Verizon Wireless

For more than a decade, Verizon Wireless has shown total disregard for labor law and the rights of workers to a voice in the workplace and to a fair contract. Workers at Verizon Wireless who want a union voice have been fired and laid off, harassed and intimidated by supervisors, required to attend “captive audience” meetings and mandatory anti-union training.  Call centers that had a growing number of union supporters were shut down between 2000 and 2004, putting 2,000 people out of work in MA, NY, and NJ.   Verizon Wireless has refused to abide by the agreement it made with CWA to remain neutral in union organizing efforts in the Northeast and is instead using endless litigation to prevent employees from making use of the agreement. There are numerous complaints of labor law violations pending against Verizon Wireless.

The contrast between Verizon Wireless and Cingular Wireless, which supports full employer neutrality and card check, couldn’t be clearer.  At Cingular, where there is true neutrality, more than 13,000 workers have joined CWA just since July 2005, when those agreements went into effect at what was AT&T Wireless. It’s clear that when fear and intimidation are removed from the workplace, workers choose a union voice. That’s what is happening at Cingular and that’s exactly what would happen at Verizon Wireless.

Donald Rumsfeld

Donald "Grinch" Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, wants to add another title to his resume, “Union Buster of the Millenium”. Rumsfeld is proposing to strip over 600,000 federal employees of their collective bargaining rights and voice at work. If he succeeds, it will be the largest denial of union rights in U.S. history. In Rummy’s world when you work hard and defend your country your reward is losing the very freedoms you are pledged to protect.

Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart is the largest private in employer in the United States. Wal-Mart makes billions in profits while Wal-Mart employees, most of whom are not permitted to work full-time, typically gross less than $14,000 per year. Low wages and high healthcare costs mean most employees are forced to go without insurance. Wal-Mart stores throughout the country maintain an outdated culture which fosters discrimination against women, people with disabilities, racial and ethnic minorities, and gays, lesbians, and transgender individuals. Intimidation, coercion, worker firing, and threats poison the union election process in Wal-Marts nationwide. One-on-one intimidation sessions and forced anti-union meetings are just a few of the tactics that have been employed by their squadron of union-busters to thwart efforts to organize Wal-Mart workers. Because of their frequent violations of workers' rights, Wal-Mart faces lawsuits in almost half the states in the country.