Mr. Kelly pretty clearly gives away the store in his essay's title. When he says that "We" are better off without Unions one is naturally led to wonder who is this "We"? Is it the American people generally? American workers? American families? The American economy? From reading the article it's clear that the "We" of which Mr. Kelly speaks is actually him and "small" businessmen whom he presumes to speak for. I denote the word "small" in quotations because from Emerald Packaging's own website we read that "Emerald Packaging is one of the largest flexible packaging manufacturers on the West Coast and one of the biggest suppliers of produce packaging in the country." So clearly the term small is a relative term to Mr. Kelly. Relative to whether or not he's trying to gain sympathy from the public as he opposes the legally protected rights of his workers, apparently.
The entire article is a bit off, not just in its content but in its approach. Apparently Mr. Kelly's years of experience in "business journalism" has taught him that the CEO of an admittedly large company is a sympathetic figure and that a message of the poor-put-upon CEO is one that resonates well with the public. I'm not so sure that that is sound media strategy but this what Mr. Kelly has chosen to do.
He opens his piece by recalling the dread he faced when he could no longer jet off to Dallas for Thanksgiving with his family and received a call informing him that OSHA inspectors had arrived at his company. This literally made Mr. Kelly cry. I'm not a psychologist but I think if the mere mention of the fact that OSHA has arrived at your company makes you cry you may have some irrational fears to deal with. Here though we readers are subjected to a blatant lie from Mr. Kelly,
Because if an Occupational Safety and Health Administration inspector shows up unannounced it means someone in your company—or outside it—has complained to them about a possible safety problem.
That is patently false. OSHA never announces their inspections. In fact OSHA is forbidden by rule from announcing their inspections ahead of time except in very specific circumstances. Here's the rule, read it for yourself. Why would Mr. Kelly lie about this so easily discoverable fact? Because it allows him to setup the "Union as the boogeyman" theme that the rest of his piece follows,
My family thought I should have just gone to Dallas. But my paranoia runs too deep. With the Obama Administration pushing the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill that would end elections and force companies to recognize a union if over half its employees signed cards requesting one, something called a "card check," I'm worried by anything that looks like possible organizing. And an OSHA visit fits the bill.
It's a patently ridiculous leap of logic on Mr. Kelly's part and the fact that he must rely on a complete fabrication to setup this argument is an indictment on his entire piece. If you can't make your argument without lying to your readers, much less lying in the first 78 words, then you don't have much of an argument.
Mr. Kelly continues by pointing to the experience of a union organizing campaign from his perspective as a CEO. What's interesting is that Kelly fails to mention that the prolonged organzing campaigns are a direct result of CEO's like himself refusing to allow their workers to simply check a card stating their support for or against the union. Instead Kelly and his CEO pals force an election and purposefully drag out the process for weeks, months and years in order to fire and harass workers who are supportive of the union and to call mandatory staff meetings designed to indoctrinate workers against the union. Indeed Kelly wears these meetings as a badge of honor,
My siblings and I logged 20 hour days talking one-on-one with employees and leading meetings where I pointed out that unions had not saved local jobs at 10 factories that had recently closed.
The entire debate around "Card Check" is because of this very issue. Unions would like the workers to have the choice between card check or an election. Employers want to retain that decision for themselves precisely because they know that it gives them control over the process and not their workers. Mr. Kelly's argument here is incredibly disingenuous. Organizing campaigns are lengthy and arduous because CEO's like Mr. Kelly choose to make them lengthy and ardous. Far from being a burden the process actually benefits employers who wish to keep their workers from organizing.
Moving on we get a frank admission from Mr. Kelly, namely that his company did not respect their workers and failed to institute minimum standards and practices to benefit his employees.
Truthfully, we hadn't been prepared for life without a union. We didn't build a human resources department, failed to craft a wage scale to guarantee timely increases, and didn't reach out enough to hear employee concerns.
So there you have it. Mr. Kelly was a negligent boss and yet we're supposed to be sympathetic to him and his plight. It's an incredibly arrogant and self-serving world view that Mr. Kelly has, perhaps this is the root of his management issues.
Next we move to the portion where Mr. Kelly tacitly admits that he is a terrible negotiator who will sign contracts that he knowingly can't fulfill,
Why go through all this effort? Like most businesspeople, we don't want a union coming between us and our employees. We worry that a union might attempt to drive up wages higher than we can afford, or foist a health care plan on us more expensive than our thin margins can handle. Our past experience with a union taught us—and many of employees said as much—that too often the union protected employees with the lowest production or worst quality. We also know that some union contracts strictly limit the ability of managers to help run or setup machinery, something that would deeply hurt our company, where supervisor's often wield wrenches.
This is a boiler-plate argument made in every anti-union article and argument, "Unions will force us to pay unsustainable wages and benefits!"
Unions don't show up and force a contract on anyone. There is a process of bargaining and negotiations that occurs. No one will force Mr. Kelly into anything. Why CEO's suddenly lose all of their ability as businessmen the second a union is involved in the negotiations is always a confounding question. How does Mr. Kelly stay in business with such poor skills? Do all of his suppliers also have him locked into unsustainable contracts? Why does Mr. Kelly choose to sign such contracts?
Mr. Kelly and any business owner who makes such an argument deserves to be mocked. It's a ridiculous argument wherein the reader is asked to forget that the CEO is an intelligent and savvy businessman (unless Mr. Kelly would like to argue that he didn't achieve his position through merit?) and instead pretend that the CEO is simply without free will, judgment or decision making abilities. For Mr. Kelly's argument to make any logical sense the reader is asked to completely ignore the obvious cognitive dissonance of the argument.
To close his piece Mr. Kelly reverts to a soft-sell approach,
Years ago that union drive certainly woke me up. Almost overnight we quickly overhauled our employee relations. We put a pay scale in place so that raises occurred in a timely manner and not just at the whim of a manager. We hired a human resource manager to handle day-to-day employee issues, tackling problems like reimbursements for health care costs. I began to meet regularly with employees, including periodic meals with each of our three shifts. These meetings often last two hours—or more—as employee's list ways they think the company could be improved, often offering ideas to boost productivity or quality.
I must confess, unlike many businesspeople, I do have a soft spot for the spirit of EFCA.
See, he's not a lying CEO out to crush his workers right to organize. He sort of likes EFCA! I guess if Mr. Kelly thinks we'll swallow his lies about OSHA and his claims about negotiations we'll swallow this disingenuous nonsense as well.
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