Labor judge overturns union election at Target

[Omaha Steve]

24 hours old or I would have posted in LBN.

http://www.omaha.com/article/20120522/AP05/305219814

Published Tuesday May 22, 2012

By ANNE D'INNOCENZIO

NEW YORK (AP) - An administrative law judge from the National Labor Relations Board has overturned the union election last year at a Target store on New York's Long Island and ordered a new election citing unfair labor practices.

The decision comes almost a year after The United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 1500 contested the 137-85 vote against unionization in June 2011. It argued that Target illegally intimidated workers for months leading up to the vote. Target denied the allegations.

A "yes" vote would have made the store Target's first with a unionized workforce. Target has 1,700 stores, all in the U.S.

"Target completely poisoned the democratic process from day one," said Patrick Purcell, assistant to the president of the UFCW Local 1500 in an interview with The Associated Press. "And now a judge agreed with everything we said."

FULL story at link.

[99th_Monkey]

1. Woot! Always good to hear positive Labor news. It's so rare. ~nt

[Scout]

2. Union? YES! n/t

[Ezlivin]

3. Gotta love those 'activist judges'

Great news!

[annabanana]

4. and THIS, my dears, is exactly what the NLRB is FOR!

huzzah

[senseandsensibility]

5. Cool!

Great news. Does this mean Target may soon be unionized?

[gratuitous]

6. Not every Target store, of course, but this one gets another vote

Hopefully without quite so much interference and intimidation from Target's management. So the folks deciding whether to form a union will be those in the union, not management.

I like, though, how the headline makes it sound like this case was an overturning of a union victory, instead of the other way around.

[sulphurdunn]

8. The headline

hit me the same way.

[senseandsensibility]

14. I agree, and since I was already feeling down, I almost

didn't want to read the rest of it. I was glad I did. I find such twisting of the facts strange, and probably not accidental. Most newspapers are owned by conservatives who are staunchly anti union.

[peacefreak]

7. GOOD!!!

I knew I was in trouble when the longest training video was about the dangers of unionizing. Yeah. Fast, friendly & fun & fuck unions.

[PatrynXX]

9. Target is 100 times more anti union than walmart

even in jest , they take the jokes more serious than joking about killing Obama...

[patrice]

10. K&R

[Jim Lane]

11. Meanwhile, though, that Target store went the last year without a union.

The election in which Target violated the law was in June 2011. Now it will be rerun.

This is why I've reluctantly come to favor card check. Card check is a bad idea because, where there's a dispute about unionization, the decision should be made by the workers in a free and fair election. The trouble is that "free and fair election" is not our current system.

If we were adjudicating cases like this one much more quickly, and putting real teeth into the rules concerning unfair labor practices, then workers could get free choice without card check. Card check would take away free choice from some workers but not as many as does the current system.

[upi402]

12. union people are wonderful

go get it brothers and sisters.

[Scurrilous]

13. K & R