http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/4/3/716119/-Nooses,-Racial-Harassment-Used-Against-Workers-Trying-To-Form-Union-In-Alabamaby PaulVA
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Fri Apr 03, 2009 at 07:39:45 AM PDT
The Austal Shipyard in Mobile, AL is owned by an Australian company that specializes in building commercial high speed vessels like the Hawaiian SuperFerry and the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) which is being built to serve as the next generation in troop transports.
The story of what happened to the workers at this shipyard is one that goes back to 2002 when the National Labor Relations Board held an election at the Mobile, Alabama company when workers were seeking to join the Sheet Metal Workers International Association.
This NLRB secret ballot election resulted in a systematic abuse of the law with mass firings of union supports and systematic harassment.
10 pro-union employees were fired, other workers were told that they would be fired if they signed a union card and the company even proclaimed that everyone would be fired if the union prevailed in the election
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It took six years, but finally in 2008 the NLRB ordered another election held due to the hostile workplace the company created by manipulating current labor law. Turnover was so severe at the shipyard that an entirely new workforce was in place.
The black workers who were added to this new workforce were having problems of their own, not at all unlike the problems management had promised to fix six years earlier as part of its previous anti-union campaign.
A group of 22 current and former black employees had just filed a class action suit against the shipyard, claiming that company managers participated in and condoned widespread racial discrimination. The suit included widespread allegations of a racially hostile work environment, including supervisors calling black workers "monkeys" or "boy" or "blue gums" or "n--r".
Jermaine Roberson, said that in December of 2007, he found a stick figure hanging by a wire noose with the word "n--r" written on it, he found a stick figure hanging by a wire noose with the word "n--r" written on it. The company did nothing except have several supervisors invetigate it. Other workers found graffiti written on walls all over the shipyard reading: UNION: Useless N---rs In Our Nation; Big N---r Hunt: All Welcome; Cater to a N___r: Vote Union. Still, nothing was done and nobody was punished.
With all of harassment as a backdrop, it is no wonder that Austal once again intimidated its black workers by subjecting them to another anti-union campaign that consisted of a witch's brew of intimidation and harassment.
Carolyn Slay was once of those union supporters.
According to an affidavit she filed with the NLRB, she had attended a union meeting in December of 2007 to "hear what the union was all about." After volunteering to help get the word out about the union to her co-workers, she began coming under increasing harassment.
It started almost immediately when one of her supervisors noticed she had union stickers on her hard hat. He threatened her by noting if something were to be dropped on her head with those stickers still on her hardhat; the company would refuse to cover her for her injury.
As she continued to report to work every day, the hostility from the company and supervisors continued to get worse. First her tools were stolen. Then her welding machine was sabotaged time and time again. Other workers she knew told her that a rumor was floating around the shipyard about her being a "target" because of her union support. One supervisor she knew even confided to her that he had been instructed to write her up every chance he got to build a case for her to be fired.
FULL story at link.
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