Workers board hears union-busting testimony

Yawu Miller

Marie Chery doesn’t need much of an introduction.

“I’m the one they say used voodoo to win the election,” she says.

Chery, a Seventh Day Adventist, says she is insulted by the allegations spread by management at Harborside Healthcare’s Wakefield nursing home. But she is equally outraged by the implicit assumption that an organizer would have to resort to coercion to persuade workers to sign union cards.

“We organized ourselves because we wanted to be treated like human beings,” she said. “We went through all the necessary steps to form a union and we won. Now we want Harborside to respect our choice.”

Chery gave testimony October 20 before an international delegation of workers’ rights and human rights advocates at City Hall called American Rights at Work. The panel members heard testimony from Chery and other workers detailing their efforts to fight for better working conditions.

American Rights at Work was founded two years ago by a coalition of unions and other groups concerned about a widely-perceived erosion of workers’ rights to organize.

Those testifying spoke of their employers’ efforts to undermine unionizing and their efforts to persuade government regulators to uphold their right to organize.

While Annette Brown said workers who supported a failed bid to unionize the workforce at Brockton Hospital have been intimidated, subjected to surveillance and unfairly disciplined.

“Many of the employees are immigrants and were afraid to speak out for their rights,” Brown said. “We want the employers to be afraid enough of the law to allow us to unionize.”

In Chery’s case, the workers successfully held their election and voted overwhelmingly in favor of a union, but Harborside Healthcare contested their victory, claiming Chery intimidated her mostly Haitian cohort of co-workers with threats of voodoo.

The American Rights at Work members said the union-busting techniques being employed in the United States were not unique to this country.

“The anti-union campaigns are no different from what you see in Guatemala or El Salvador or in the rest of the world,” said Guatemalan human rights activist Maria Adela Mejia Perez. “The corporations are very well-organized when it comes to getting rid of unions.”

American Rights at Work members, however, said they did not expect to hear of an anti-union climate in the United States — a country that often holds other countries to high human rights standards.

“It’s deeply troubling to hear that in the United States there are people who are in fear,” said Veronique Marleau, a former member of the Canadian Relations Board.

“Having worked in other countries, particularly those in Africa and Asia, it’s concerning when you go to these countries and rely on international standards for their workers. These are standards promoted by the United States elsewhere.”

In addition to their hearing, the board toured several job sites in Massachusetts, including a fish processing plant in New Bedford where a largely Guatemalan workforce works for low wages in often dangerous conditions.

“People are losing fingers,” said Russ Davis, an organizer for Massachusetts Jobs With Justice. “They don’t get paid for overtime. It’s really nasty stuff.”

The point of the tour, according to Davis, is to shed light on the conditions of some of the state’s lowest-paid workers.

“We’re turning over rocks to show people what the job market is like in Massachusetts,” he said “Most people think it’s wrong that people are abused at work. Most people think people should have the right to organize. Most people would be appalled if they heard these stories.”