Worker solidarity is surging in Maine, but so is union busting

Standing in front of the federal building in Bangor on Thursday, Doug Hall of Machinists Local S6 at Bath Iron Works explained how they won their strike last year.

“The only reason why we won that battle is because we all stuck together. If they’d have taken two or three of us at once and fired us, well then you wait two to three years to get your job back,” said Hall. “We were lucky, but a lot of upcoming unions, new unions trying to get their feet under them, it doesn’t happen. The law is weak at its very best.”

Other speakers at the event organized by the Maine AFL-CIO told a similar story — a surge of workers across Maine beginning to stand up for themselves even as protections for union organizing have been made toothless and union busting happens routinely with few consequences.

The solution to this imbalance that they support is the PRO Act, federal legislation that would close many of the loopholes that have been torn into the 1935 National Labor Relations Act by decades of conservative political activism.

Read more: https://mainebeacon.com/opinion-worker-solidarity-is-surging-in-maine-but-so-is-union-busting/