The NLRB says it uses the settlement procedure to avoid long and expensive hearings, followed by appeals that can last years. And it’s true that had the board decided to hold a hearing, the process might have lasted much longer, and there still would have been no fines at the end. Just one extreme example – Smithfield Foods fired union supporter Kieth Ludlum at its huge North Carolina slaughterhouse in 1994. Ludlum didn’t walk back through the factory doors until 2006.

Fear of firing is probably the single biggest reason why workers don’t organize unions. According to a recent report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research, “Dropping the Ax: Illegal Firings During Union Election Campaigns, 1951-2007,” by John Schmitt and Ben Zipperer, workers were fired for union activity in thirty percent of all union campaigns, so fear isn’t unreasonable. “Aggressive actions by employers – often including illegal firings — have significantly undermined the ability of US workers to unionize their workplaces,” according to report co-author John Schmitt. “The financial penalties for illegal actions, including firing pro-union workers, are minimal, so it makes perfect sense for employers to break the law to derail union-organizing efforts.” That percentage has gone up from 16 percent in the last 1990’s, to 26 percent in the early 2000’s and to 30 percent in 2007.

If EFCA had been in effect during the Rite Aid campaign, the company would have had to pay triple back wages for its illegal firings. “That would dissuade a lot of employers from breaking the law,” Cardon predicts. But with no fines and no card-check recognition process, it took over two years to overcome the fear and get a majority of the workers to face the company’s hostility. Every supporter recruited to the union cause had to weigh the possibility that he or she might lose his or her job. Union supporters say it felt like working in a war zone.

Nevertheless, the union committee did finally win the support of a majority, and when the election was held, the vote was 283 in favor, and 261 against representation. A slim margin, but enough.
The company could have appealed the election results, a common tactic that can sometimes delay bargaining for years. Rite Aid, however, adopted another strategy. For the year following the election, it sat in negotiations and agreed to virtually nothing. “Since June 6 we’ve had 18 sit-down sessions,” Cardon explained in late February. “We presented Rite Aid with 43 articles for a proposed contract – wages, working conditions, seniority. We’ve only been able to reach agreement on six, and the most meaningful was where to put up our union bulletin board.”

Rite Aid claimed the union was demanding “exorbitant” wage and benefit increases, which the company can’t afford, according to company representative Cheryl Slavinsky. A Rite Aid statement asserts that “our wages currently are very competitive, and we offer our associates a good health plan, which is the same health plan that covers many of our other union associates.”

In the meantime, though, Rite Aid hired an anti-union consultant, Bell and Associates, to engage in what is politely called “persuasion activities.” Translation: convince workers that it was useless to organize since the union can’t get a contract.

“People are really exhausted now,” Warner says. “They’re tired. They say, ‘We voted this union in, but what has it done for us?’ Employees who were against the union before are going around getting decertification petitions filled out. The company is wearing the employees down, and systematically picking them off.” Given that the NLRB was ready to charge Rite Aid earlier with setting up an employee committee to fight the union, it’s not unreasonable to suspect that the circulation of decertification petitions would have company support as well.

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