Day 199 - 11 Dec 95 - Page 15


     
     1
     2        Then if we deal with the statement of Daniel Cantor which
     3        is the next one in the file.  October 27th 1993:
     4
     5        "My name is Daniel Cantor.  In 1980 I was the Organising
     6        Director for the Detroit Fast-food Workers Union, Local
     7        222, and I am writing to relate my experience in trying to
     8        organise employees of several McDonald's franchises in
     9        Detroit.  Although this occurred some 13 years ago, it is
    10        still vivid in my mind.  There were several dozen
    11        McDonald's franchises in the metropolitan Detroit area.  In
    12        early winter 1980, following on the success we had
    13        organising the workers at a downtown Burger King, we began
    14        talking with employees at about 15 different McDonald's
    15        restaurants.  There was great interest from many workers,
    16        as the basic wage in the fast-food industry is minimum
    17        wage, and McDonald's was no different.
    18
    19        Several employee committees were formed at McDonald's
    20        franchises around the city.  One particular
    21        franchise -- Ralph Kelly -- owned three McDonald's
    22        restaurants in which the employees wanted to form a union.
    23        Within a short period of time (perhaps 8 weeks) some 65 per
    24        cent of the workers had signed union 'authorisation' cards
    25        (the first step in winning union representation).  We were
    26        quite excited about this show of support and soon filed for
    27        an election with the National Labour Relations Board.
    28        I should say that we were a young and, in retrospect, quite
    29        naive group of organisers, for we were not prepared for the
    30        enormous hostility that the Company was about to
    31        demonstrate, nor the unethical (and in some cases illegal)
    32        acts that McDonald's would soon be engaged in.
    33
    34        The first thing that McDonald's did was to challenge our
    35        right to have an election, but the Labour Board ruled in
    36        our favour.  They wanted to wear down the enthusiasm of the
    37        union supporters and find out who the ringleaders were.
    38        The reader should know that nearly all of the employees
    39        were young (16 to 19 years old) black people.  Some were
    40        from strong union households (often the children of
    41        auto-workers) while others were quite poor and relied upon
    42        the wages earned at McDonald's, however meagre, to
    43        supplement family income.
    44
    45        McDonald's strategy against the union had two basic
    46        prongs.  First, identify and isolate the 'troublemakers'
    47        who were leading the union drive and, second, develop
    48        programmes that would increase employee support for
    49        management.  In the first case, they fired a couple of
    50        outspoken pro-union workers (Donald Hughes and Wendell 
    51        Jones) and especially tried to isolate and undermine the 
    52        efforts of a young black woman named Stephanie Douglas (she 
    53        was a star worker and could not be fired, so they changed
    54        her shift and otherwise reduced her ability to talk with
    55        her co-workers).  Hughes (and I think Jones) eventually won
    56        back pay from the Company after filing a charge with the
    57        National Labour Relations Board that they had been
    58        illegally fired.  I also recall that other NLRB charges
    59        against the Company were upheld and that McDonald's was
    60        instructed by the NLRB to post an official election

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