WORKERS PLAN TO RENOVATE HOME DEPOT WITH A UNION

[Donkees]

Jonah Furman
September 21 2022

Excerpt:

On Monday, September 19, workers filed a petition to organize a union among 276 workers at a Home Depot in northeast Philadelphia. If successful, the independent union would be the first at the home repair chain, the fifth-largest private employer in the U.S.

Vince Quiles, who’s worked at the store for five years, says the union effort gathered over 100 signatures for an election in just five weeks. With nearly 500,000 Home Depot workers nationwide, a successful win in Philadelphia could create an opportunity to rapidly grow the ranks of unionized workers in this country.

White-collar management was flown into the store to hold captive audience meetings and one-on-one conversations with employees about how little a union could do for them. The store manager was switched out overnight. But Quiles thinks the move is backfiring. “Now it’s funny, corporate’s walking around the store and talking to people,” says Quiles, “and they think they’re doing something, but it’s backfiring. People are like ‘Oh, we filed for a union, now you care?’”

https://perfectunion.us/home-depot-union/


⤵️
Quote Tweet
John Fetterman
@JohnFetterman

US Senate candidate, PA
·
Sep 20
Home Depot's billionaire co-founder Ken Langone is a *huge* donor to anti-labor GOP candidates

I sincerely hope this news ruins his day

Philly workers are standing up for the Union Way of Life 💯 twitter.com/MorePerfectUS/…

[a kennedy]

1. Yeeehaaaaaa.... GO UNIONS GO. 👏🏻 👏🏻 👏🏻

[llmart]

2. +1

I'd like to see a resurgence of unions across this country, though I doubt the South would approve. But you never know. The younger generations may wake up and see that there is power in numbers.

[PortTack]

3. Good! The Home Depot founder is a far RW nut job. Maybe he'll stroke out

[empedocles]

4. or found to be intricated, comproised, in the trump mess.

[CousinIT]

5. HA! GOOD. I hate Home Despot's right-wing politics. n/t

[Hermit-The-Prog]

6. It's about time that American workers re-discover the balance of power that Unions bring.

Roe, Roe, Roe your vote
against theocracy!
Republicans revoke your rights
and kill democracy!

THESE are the races that will determine control of the House of Representatives:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217175231

Stick 'em up for a blue wave: https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217078977
Donate to 38 House candidates: https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217067267

[Hortensis]

7. 276 workers so far are in this and have filed to form an independent union,

rather than joining one of 3 large existing ones. Employers can ban union organizing in stores and have had the assistance of many union-busting laws since the Reagan days, courtesy of the Republicans and those they serve of course. Maybe that has something to do with going this direction, or?

House Democrats passed the Protecting the Right to Organize Act (PRO Act) a couple years ago, but we failed to get the needed majority in the senate.

Go, HD employees!

[Donkees]

8. And the scale of the Amazon Labor Union's victory in Staten Island gave Quiles hope:

“If Chris Smalls could do that at a warehouse of over 8,000 people, we can do it in our store of 300.”

So he called the NLRB to learn more about the process, watched interviews with Smalls about how he did it, and started having conversations with people about their jobs.

https://perfectunion.us/home-depot-union/

After the stunning victory at Amazon by a little-known independent union that didn’t exist 18 months ago, organized labor has begun to ask itself an increasingly pressing question: Does the labor movement need to get more disorganized?

Unlike traditional unions, the Amazon Labor Union relied almost entirely on current and former workers rather than professional organizers in its campaign at a Staten Island warehouse. For financing, it turned to GoFundMe appeals rather than union coffers built from the dues of existing members. It spread the word in a break room and at low-key barbecues outside the warehouse.

In the end, the approach succeeded where far bigger, wealthier and more established unions have repeatedly fallen short.

“It’s sending a wake-up call to the rest of the labor movement,” said Mark Dimondstein, the president of the American Postal Workers Union. “We have to be homegrown — we have to be driven by workers — to give ourselves the best chance.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/07/business/economy/amazon-union-labor.html