Chicago Local 21 Charges Comcast at NLRB
July 21, 2008
 Direct surveillance of volunteer organizers and remote-controlled cameras in the parking lots were just two of the tactics employed by Comcast in South Chicago to derail an IBEW organizing drive that failed in June by a vote of 99 to 79.
Downers Grove, Ill., Local 21 has been granted a hearing by the NLRB on a series of objections and unfair labor practice charges. Six workers who participated in the campaign to organize technicians, customer service representatives and warehouse workers are preparing to testify on behalf of the union.
In captive audience meetings prior to the vote, Comcast segregated the most outspoken union supporters from their peers to hammer home their message that the union isn’t the way to win improvements. The cable giant also threatened to remove the Comm Tech pay program, a training course that is offered only at company locations that are unorganized. But the company also used the carrot of paid meals and fewer assignments.
Comcast treated the workers to breakfasts and barbecues and paid all employees to attend. And they radically reduced the workload for South Chicago staff, a driving issue in the campaign at the former AT&T shop, where workers decertified the union in 2003.
Despite the loss, Local 21 is not backing away from IBEW and CWA’s national campaign to organize Comcast Conditions could be favorable. As soon as the vote was final, says Business Representative Tom Hopper, the company ratcheted up the workloads that they had reduced during the organizing campaign.
“Physical presence will continue to be our main approach,” says Business Representative Dave Webster. Local organizers discussed issues with workers at the Comcast’s remote employee parking lot, conducted house calls and held barbecues after work for potential members. Concerns about safety, favoritism and respect on the job aren’t going away, he says. Local 21 has sent a letter to Comcast naming employee leaders of the campaign and warned the company not to engage in any retaliation, says Hopper.
“It’s more than ironic that Comcast is engaging in such systematic union busting in the very place where labor history was made when thousands of workers struck the Pullman railroad car manufacturing plant in 1894,” says Hopper. “George Pullman, like Comcast, was a paternalistic employer who claimed to have the workers best interests at heart, but, in the end, his greed and ruthlessness took over.”
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