Page 16
January 2, 2019
Edith Gillis pickets in front of the Hawthorne Burgerville days after it won federal recognition as a unionized shop.
Power
c ontinued from p age 9
to the
Workers
ployees, Curry said.
The union currently does not collect
dues, Curry clarified, but may eventually
incorporate that at some point in the fu-
ture.
“That will only ever come after we get
a raise, and it will [be] democratically de-
cided by the union,” Curry said.
He regrets that the written distribution
of company materials about the union or-
ganizing efforts seems to paint him and
other union leaders as oppressive to their
constituents.
“One of the most stressful things about
the union-busting campaign is seeing the
company putting in all these resources to
paint me and other folks at my job as sort
of untrustworthy, shadowy people, who
have no relationship with our co-workers
and who are out here just to get their mon-
ey,” he said, adding that the description
would more closely fit the actions of cor-
porate officers.
Already, the union has been able to fight
back against unilateral decisions handed
down by Burgerville’s corporate offices.
One such example came this fall when a
company-wide ban was imposed against
employees wearing buttons that expressed
things like support for Black Lives Matter
and undocumented immigrants.
The union filed an Unfair Labor Prac-
tice complaint over the ban with the
National Labor Relations Board, which
found merit in their claim last month.
Another stride that was made by the
union included getting the Burgerville
Convention Center location on Martin
Luther King Jr. Boulevard to enforce rest
breaks for their employees.
The lack of issuing regular breaks by
management to employees—which is
against Oregon state law--caused the store
to get slapped last year with a $10,000 bill
to settle the wage and hour violations,
“We get breaks now, that’s a big victo-
ry,” Curry said.
In addition, one tentative agreement the
union has reached during bargaining now
allows workers to step aside from unsafe
work or unsafe customers.
That’s important, Curry said, because
several months back employees at the
92nd and Powell Burgerville were forced
to serve a man who had Nazi tattoos and
had been assaulting people at a picket out-
side the store moments earlier.
“It’s not hypothetical for us,” Curry
said. “Racist folks come into shops all the
time and are really harmful to people.”
He added that many union workers
have been retaliated against for support-
ing the union.
At the Hawthorne shop, Curry has wit-
nessed things like management throwing
pro-union buttons in the trash, or holding
a meeting with employees a few days be-
fore a union election to offer a charity ser-
vice that helps with budgeting and ignor-
ing the company’s poverty-level wages.
Curry described the meeting as a
“weird, confusing situation.”
One worker at the Gladstone Burger-
ville in Milwaukie was even fired for what
the union alleged was because he was a
prominent union member.
When the Burgerville union workers
filed an Unfair Labor Practice with the
National Labor Relations Board, the board
found the claim had merit, and mandated
the employee be re-hired with significant
back-pay.
Curry, who grew up near San Diego,
Calif. at the U.S. border with Tijuana,
Mexico, said he’s looking forward to
working with other union members to
hold the company accountable as negotia-
tions continue.
“We have shown that we are willing to
hold pickets and to go on strike to go on
large multi-store strikes like we’re seri-
ous about this. And we know that that’s
the only way that we win. We are also
committed to good faith negotiations with
Burgerville. We sometimes doubt that
Burgerville is committed to good faith ne-
gotiations with us.”