Juan Roche worked for Waukesha Electric for over 17 years. When he heard rumors that company executives planned to cut wages and benefits in order to boost their profits, Juan began to talk to his coworkers about forming a union.
Although workers at Waukesha Electric eventually won their fight to become part of IBEW Local 2150, the victory was bittersweet.
Juan was fired before he had the chance cast his vote for a union. The company dismissed him within a few short days of figuring out that Juan had been circulating union cards among fellow employees.
In addition to firing Juan, the company engaged in other activities to intimidate workers before the vote. Watch the video below in which Terry Bossell explains the mandatory anti-union meetings and the threatened loss of benefits that he and his coworkers experienced:
In spite of everything that they went through, workers at Waukesha Electric managed to come together and form their union. But at what cost? We must pass the Employee Free Choice Act in order to protect heroes like Juan Roche.
As Juan himself said, “None of this would have happened if they had the law in place . . . I would still have my job.”
Somebody needs to enforce the law in order to protect workers from unfairly getting fired.
Posted by: Russell Novkov | 03/31/2009 at 07:51 PM