Blog

The UFCW Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Office recently held health and safety trainings in Iowa, Utah and Colorado for local union members and staff.

On March 29 and 30, the OSH Office held an Enhanced Worker Safety Program in Davenport, Iowa, for members and staff of UFCW Locals 230 and 431. These members are employed in the meatpacking industry. The training provided participants with an overview of how to build an effective safety committee in the workplace, hazard recognition and hazard mapping, training on safety data sheets, OSHA basics, and other related health and safety issues.

“The training was very informative,” said one of the participants. “I’ve already used this new information to request a copy of the OSHA 300 Log from my company.”

On April 21, the OSH Office held a training session for UFCW Local 99 members in Logan, Utah, as part of the local’s Stewards Training Program. These members are also employed in the meatpacking industry. At the training, members also learned about how to build an effective safety committee and hazard recognition. The training also provided an overview of practical applications using time study measures, and the roles and responsibilities of being a steward as it applies to health and safety issues in the workplace. After the training, one of the members commented about how the training helped him look at his job in a different way as it relates to workplace safety.

The OSH Office also held a training session with UFCW Local 7 in Keystone, Colo., on May 3 around the issue of workplace violence. At the training, members who work in the meatpacking, retail and health care industries learned about how to implement a workplace violence prevention program and OSHA recommendations on how to deal with violence in the workplace. Many of the members stated that this type of training is needed because of the increase in workplace violence incidents they are subjected to every day.

These health and safety trainings are available to all UFCW locals. If your local is interested in working with the OSH Office to hold a training session, have your Region Director contact Roy McAllister, the interim director of the OSH Office, at rmcallister@ufcw.org.

The general counsel of the Biden National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) recently issued a new directive about captive audience and other meetings. The NLRB’s general counsel directed regional offices of the NLRB to prosecute companies if they require workers to attend meetings where managers or consultants speak against unions or discourage workers from exercising their right to representation. The general counsel also intends to prosecute companies when their managers or supervisors “corner” workers to talk about the union or organizing.

Both kinds of communications are coercively unlawful because they compel (even if implicitly) workers to listen to anti-union messages by threat of discipline, discharge or other retaliation. By doing so, the company deprives workers of their National Labor Relations Act right to refrain from listening to company messages.

When the NLRB determines if company messages coerce or threaten workers, the Supreme Court requires the NLRB to consider the “inequality of bargaining power” between workers and companies and workers’ “economic dependence” on their jobs. In other words, workers may hear a company’s prediction of how a union contract may affect jobs to be a company threat that the workers will lose their jobs if they vote for the union. Whereas, in a different context, people who do not work for the company may find the company’s message to be just informational because their jobs don’t depend on the company and they are equal to the managers conveying the message.

While “free speech” rights protect uncoercive attempts to persuade workers to forego their right to organize, when this “speech” coerces workers in their exercise of their rights, the speech itself is unlawful. This is because the Supreme Court has held that a company’s right to “free speech” does not extend to protect threats or coercion.

The general counsel wants the NLRB to prohibit companies from holding mandatory meetings or work-floor conversations with cornered workers unless the company tells workers that their attendance or attention is truly voluntary.

How this action could help you:

If the NLRB changes the law to restrict company speech, workers will be able to freely choose whether they want a union to represent them in an environment that is truly free of explicit or implicit coercion of company speech.

The general counsel memorandum is GC 22-04 (April 7, 2022). If you have any questions regarding this directive, have your Region Director contact George Wiszynski in the Legal Department at gwiszynski@ufcw.org.