Dave Thomas is telling Congress to pass the Employee Free Choice Act. Find out why

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http://www.changetowin.org/workers-voices/employee-free-choice-act-stories/dave-thomas.html

Dave Thomas
Front-end driver for Allied Waste, Lawrenceville, Georgia

I have worked for Allied Waste in Atlanta, Georgia, for 15 years. When I was first employed with the company, it was called BFI. Then Allied Waste bought it out. We were promised that nothing would change at the company besides its name but, about a year after Allied Waste took over, our fears came true.

The first thing the company did was start taking away our benefits. Then they began cutting our pay. They also changed our discipline policy. BFI had a three-strike policy, but Allied Waste quickly initiated a new zero tolerance policy and was firing people for anything and everything. If you made a mistake, they’d fire you; if you had an accident, they’d fire you.

We finally had enough and decided to form a union. We knew we had a fight on our hands because this was our third attempt at organizing. The company made it really difficult. Management would confront, intimidate and coerce workers on a regular basis. They threatened to fire workers before they even had the chance to form a union and made it clear they didn’t need a reason to do it—they’d find one. They didn’t just threaten to fire workers either—they did fire people.

The company also forced workers to attend mandatory anti-union meetings twice a week. During these meetings, management would try to convince us that joining a union would just make our lives worse. They told us that we’d be paying union dues only to have someone else running our lives and that we wouldn’t even get a contract out of it.

By this time, we’d heard plenty of the company’s promises and knew they were empty. We organized for about eight months, but the company tried to stall us every step of the way. When we were trying to get a contract, we couldn’t even get them to set a date for negotiations for several months. Then, we went from having two to three negotiation meetings per month to having maybe one.

It became clear that we’d have to take drastic measures if we really wanted things to change, so we organized a no-call/no-show. Only about 10 people out of 140 showed up for work that day.

That’s when things started to turn around for us. The company knew that we were going to stick together and, if we were going to do a no-call/no-show, we’d do a strike.

Ten days later, Allied Waste agreed to negotiate a contract with us and held negotiation meetings for two or three days in a row. They knew they were facing another no-call/no-show, if they didn’t.

I am now a proud member of Local 728 in Atlanta. But it was a tough fight — a fight that is stacked against workers. Companies can get away with anything, and workers really need better laws in place to help them fight against illegal, anti-union tactics.

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