Saturday, April 22, 2006

Please help the Herald get this right!

Here's a letter I sent to the Herald this morning. Please write too and help them stop spreading this misinformation over and over again. You can send something to corrections@miamiherald.com or heralded@miamiherald.com:

This is really too infuriating. In today's piece "UM janitors end hunger strike but dispute lingers" you say "a secret election run by the National Labor Relations Board... requires all janitors to vote yes or no". This is the same mistake which you made in an earlier piece ("UM protests strike pressure tactice" April 13). I wrote a letter pointing out that error and you published a letter by someone else pointing out the same error. Now here you are making it again. An NLRB election does not require anyone to vote at all. It is won by a majority of voters. Non-voters simply do not count in any way. It is the card check method that comes closest to your description. If someone does not sign a card saying they want the union, they are effectively taken as a no vote. Hence the card check method requires a majority of all workers to say they want a union in order to succeed.

One reason why the labor dispute may be lingering so long is because the Herald seems incapable of publishing accurate information about it. If you took the trouble to explain accurately to your readers what was at issue there would be much less confusion of the kind you report. Please correct this error and do not continue to perpetuate this misinformation.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

One reason why the labor dispute may be lingering so long is because the Herald seems incapable of publishing accurate information...

Now you're blaming the newspaper???

Anonymous said...

Dear Anonymous,

I'm saying it doesn't help when the newspapers get the facts wrong. You surely couldn't disagree with that, could you?

Anonymous said...

I don't disagree with the need for accurate information, and I don't disagree that the Herald completely let these workers down - but I don't see that as a cause for the dispute lingering. I truly believe the only reason the dispute is lingering on is because one of the three major players in this game has choosen to muddy the waters with their own national agenda.

Anonymous said...

Both UNICCO and UM advocate a kind of "elections" where by the company is given a three week period of time to escalate demonstrated anti-union tactics of firing and threatening workers before a vote is held. If only three people show up becuase the rest beleive retribution will occur, they vote for everyone.

A fairer process, I would argue, is where an actual majority of all voters are needed. this process is the card check elections.

I could also argue a fairer process is not one where an "election" is held that allows only the company access to voters, only the company to have 100% access to media,and where only the company even knows how many voters there are. This is the NRLB elections.

If the "national agenda" to which you are refering is the Employee Free Choice act, which requries companies to respect the petitions signed by workers- and is backed by the democratic party and even moderate republicans- than it should be pushed further.

i would suggest reading some reports from Americanrightsatwork.org. The head of which used to be the Democratic whip and a former congressmen. He is considered an expert in democracy in the work place. Thanks,
-jake

Anonymous said...

Both UNICCO and UM advocate a kind of "elections" where by the company is given a three week period of time to escalate demonstrated anti-union tactics of firing and threatening workers before a vote is held. If only three people show up becuase the rest beleive retribution will occur, they vote for everyone.

A fairer process, I would argue, is where an actual majority of all voters are needed. this process is the card check elections.

I could also argue a fairer process is not one where an "election" is held that allows only the company access to voters, only the company to have 100% access to media,and where only the company even knows how many voters there are. This is the NRLB elections.

If the "national agenda" to which you are refering is the Employee Free Choice act, which requries companies to respect the petitions signed by workers- and is backed by the democratic party and even moderate republicans- than it should be pushed further.

i would suggest reading some reports from Americanrightsatwork.org. The head of which used to be the Democratic whip and a former congressmen. He is considered an expert in democracy in the work place. Thanks,
-jake