THE EUROPEAN BUILDING MATERIAL and Metal Group is taking drastic measures in the USA in order to keep the Union out of its factories.

From one day to the next Keith Fulbright found himself being followed by bosses, department supervisors and observers. Wherever he went - and being a service manager he got around a lot within the company - he was being followed. When he stopped to speak with a colleague they walked right up to him and stood right beside him. Eventually, a group of workers got together, who followed him and waited for him in the hallways and threatened him. Why all this happening? Keith had signed a card wherein his employer was asked to recognize PACE as the Union for employees - and a colleague had reported this to the company management. PACE stands for Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International Union, the US counterpart to the German IG Bergbau, Chemie, Energie (IG Mining, Chemistry, Energy).

The company management reacted immediately and spread the rumor that organizing a Union could lead to reduced wages and even to the closing of companies. This also turned colleagues against the Union people. The reason why this story has a regional meaning is because a multi-national group is involved, which has subsidiaries in France, Belgium, Canada and England - Also Bertelsmann is represented in this "capital monster".

Keith Fulbright himself had no experience with the Union; however, his father was an old Union guy. The necessity to organize a company, even in a small rural town like Sylacauga, Alabama, in the south of the US, which had been free of Unions for the most part, occurred through a mega-fusion last summer. That was when the building material manufacturer Imetal, with its home office in France and the British company English China Clays (ECC), based in England, and which holds 52 percent of industrial ceramics in the world market, merged and became Imerys. Imerys, with its Headquarters in Paris, has approximately 10,000 employees worldwide with almost half of them in the USA. Through this merger two companies in the cotton mill town of Sylacauga were brought together under one roof. The smaller one was Union organized since 1975, the bigger one was not - when ECC took over the company from an American owner in 1994, the English company management let all Union people go.

The company management of the former ECC-company (now Imerys) informed PACE that it only represents a minority of workers in both companies and therefore it does not count as a tariff partner any longer. Ever since then all attempts to form a Union in the company that is still not organized to this date, have been blocked through intimidation and revenge: that is what Joe Drexler of the PACE office in Nashville, Tennessee said.

PACE has filed a lawsuit with the National Labor Relations Board and has documented the intimidation tactics. For example, supposedly a group of better-paid workers within the company had formed the "A-Team" which wears T-shirts with the logo "Goon Squad". Also, PACE has passed a handbook for department supervisors, which explained how to recognize Union related activities ("if workers who do not work together, stand around and talk"), or how to stop the formation of a Union from the very beginning ("explain to the workers that they may be fired when they go on strike"). The attorney for Imerys, Frank Parker, confirmed the existence of this booklet to Taz and also confirmed that there could have already occurred some type of breach of the rules.

However, he accused the Union of wanting to avoid a vote amongst the colleagues because they were afraid that they would lose. Sure enough, Imerys - and not the Union - has picked a date, when the workers should vote whether they want to be represented through a Union. PACE, however, states that the work environment is so "poisoned" that there is no such thing as a free Union election.

PACE representatives believe that the attempts to prevent Union activity within international companies with factories in the USA is only the first step to also weaken the European Unions. "America could then become the Mexico of Europe", according to Drexler. He only sees one chance and that is when the Unions work together on an international level and when they globalize.

(c) Contrapress media GmbH