Union Bullying Must Stop!

[Joanne98]

Illinois blogger Mike Doyle of Chicago Carless wrote a guest post for us about union bullying. You hear about union bullying on Fox and on Hate Talk radio all the time, where the concept has been twisted into something unrecognizable. This is what it's really all about:

Heartless For the Hell of It? Phenomenally Profitable Express Scripts Launches a Recession-Era Attack on Wage Earners

-by Mike Doyle

This should be the story of a win-win situation. In the middle of the Great Recession, a nationally prominent mega-corporation manages to achieve phenomenal profitability and decides to share its good fortune with the wage workers who helped make that profit possible. All of that happens to be true about Express Scripts (Nasdaq: ESRX), the nation’s second-largest pharmacy benefits manager--all except for the decision about how to thank its workers. To show their gratitude, Express Scripts managers went in a different direction. First, they publicly lauded union workers at their most efficient processing plant. Then they told them they were losing their jobs. Sometimes corporate America’s capacity to stick it to the little guy is so astounding, you can’t help but feel impressed by the chutzpah.

The plant in question is an Express Scripts processing facility in Bensalem, Pennsylvania, employing 365 workers represented by SEIU Healthcare PA. In 2009, Express Scripts thanked those workers for setting a nationwide one-day efficiency record in processing prescriptions. This summer, however, as the expiration of the workers’ current union contract approached, Express Scripts unilaterally demanded wage and benefits cuts-- not as the price of securing a new contract, but in order to keep the plant open at all. The company told its most efficient workers, essentially, work for less money and worse healthcare options, or we’re closing the plant and laying you off. Workers countered with their own give-back package and local officials promised to help the company secure public funds for plant improvements, but to no avail. On October 6, Express Scripts posted a WARN notice announcing the mid-December closure of the Bensalem plant, as well as a sister facility employing an additional approximately 650 workers.

Union bullying like that is nothing new, and certainly comes as a surprise to no one in a deadened economy like the one we’re still trying to climb out of. (Not that that makes such tactics fair.) The real surprise is Express Scripts’ justification for its demands. The company says without steep worker givebacks, it just can’t afford to keep the Bensalem plants open. Why might that be?

http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2010/11/union-bullying-must-stop.html

[snot]

1. K&R'd!

[SocialistLez]

2. If only we could hear about stuff like this on the news instead of about celebrity gossip. ::sigh::

Thanks for putting this out there OP.