May 2010

"Workplace Democracy: Corporate Style"
Video Shows Who the Real Intimidators Are
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Go to www.ibew.org

The IBEW has produced a video, "Workplace Democracy: Corporate Style" that turns the tables on the business foes of workplace fairness, with a slightly over-the-top, but nonetheless realistic depiction of what happens behind closed doors during an organizing campaign.

It shows a captive audience meeting – a tactic employed by companies in 78 percent of union representation elections – in which the bosses strong-arm, intimidate and flat-out threaten a worker they suspect of union sympathy.

"The U.S. Chamber of Commerce – along with right-wing noise groups with shady sources of funding – put out numerous talking points and videos painting unions as the problem and citing union intimidation as the biggest threat to the rights of working people to decide whether to unionize," said IBEW International President Edwin D. Hill. "They even went so far as to hire an actor from The Sopranos (a union actor, by the way) to create a cartoonish vision of this imagined reality."

The idea that unions are the problem is a lie the IBEW will not allow to stand unchallenged. Rather than earnest position papers and counterpoints, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers thought it was time to push back with a video version of how corporations really view workplace democracy.

Watch the video here.