Union Targets Target and Misses

Union Targets Target and Misses

The United Food & Commercial Workers, following years of failed efforts at unionized mega-retailer Wal-Mart, grocer Whole Foods and seeing some of its unionized employers like A&P file for bankruptcy, had set its sights on a new target: Target.

On Friday, the National Labor Relations Board conducted a secret-ballot election in Valley Stream, NY at one of Target’s approximately 1750 U.S. stores. If the union won, it would have been the first-ever unionized Target in the nation. Ultimately, the union failed.

After the employees cast their secret ballot and the NLRB counted the ballots, the union lost 137-85.

The union, of course, is displeased with the employees choice and is blaming the retailer for its loss.

“Target did everything they could to deny these workers a chance at the American Dream,” said Bruce W. Both, president of United and Commercial Workers Union Local 1500, in a statement. “However, the workers’ pursuit of a better life and the ability to house and feed their families is proving more powerful. These workers are not backing down from this fight. They are demanding another election.”

Blaming the company is, of course, the easiest thing to do for a union like the UFCW. Assigning blame is, for the UFCW, than admitting it is possible that the majority of the Target employees realized that the UFCW’s hypocritical history, its brushes with corruption, history of lengthy strikes (including the current threat to have 62,000 UFCW members in Southern California out on strike any day) may not be a suitable version of the ‘American Dream.’

Of course, there are those (somewhere) who may appreciate UFCW bosses.

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“I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes.” Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776