Work in America, 1995

All employers really need to know about how to treat their employees they really could have learned in kindergarten. The lessons are simple: treat workers well and they will do a decent job in return; listen to their problems and their needs and respond reasonably; and if they want to unionize, respect your employees legal right to do so.  Simple, right? Not exactly Ñ as the millions of workers and employers as well as the National Labor Relations Board can testify. This Labor Day, We Do The Work, the national series about the lives, issues and history of American workers, examines this often prickly relationships between management and employees in Ties That Bind, a new documentary which airs on PBS stations nationwide on Labor Day. Narrated by comic-with-a-conscience Will Durst, the one-hour program provides a Cliff Notes' history of unions in America as well as poignant scenes from the battlefields in the real world of workers organizing under often hostile circumstances. Ties is best as it lets the people on both sides of the issue state their case on camera about why unionization is or is not worth fighting for. Those who support unionization make powerful cases, such as Connie McMillan, a nurse at an Alabama hospital who thought she had job security until she held a union meeting in her living room and was fired along with others in attendance. "I felt there's no way we'd lose our jobs," she explains. "It's our right to belong to a union. I can't believe it could really happen." Many don't either. When unions were strong, as they in the early part of the century, employers couldn't pull such maneuvers as readily or easily. But since the Reagan years Ñ- a tough time for unions which hit rock bottom when the Teflon president fired the air-traffic controllers -- lots of illegal practices have gone unchecked and unpunished. Another particularly frightening story takes place inside and outside the aisles of K-Mart, a company which prides itself on its familiar atmosphere and moral high mindedness. But this was not the case when K-Mart longtime warehouse workers Lew Hubble and Don Roebel learned their drinking buddy was in fact spying on them for management. "It makes me a little leery about going out into the world and working myself when a company that he's been with for so many years could do this," offers one man's daughter, speaking from the trailer home she and her dad relocated to in order to remain with the company. "What's going to stop the same from happening to me?" It's quite an interesting twist on the future of kids today. Although Ties details many nasty management tactics, the suits Ñ- at least the ones who were willing to go on the record Ñ- are allowed plenty of air-time to make the case for non-union workplaces. But it's the testimony of one man who switched sides that ultimately vocalizes the often unspoken. "Management is trained in this country through its entire educational process that control is more important and more meaningful than the bottom line or profit" says Marty Levitt, author of Confessions of a Union Buster. "And the union Ñ- that spirit of collective bargaining -Ñ is the biggest single threat to that control." The strongest Ñ- and ultimately most hopeful Ñ- spot in the program is the story of the 2300 sweatshirt makers at the Tultex plant in Martinsville, Virginia. After four unsuccessful votes for a union, the fifth one turned into a heated event that involved the whole community. The local paper got involved. Neighbors took sides. And soon pro- and anti-union ads filled the airwaves of a local cable outlet. This battle, while nasty, revealed the power of media access. "The whole community was included [in the union debate]," explains narrator Durst, "because everybody had access." That access, and their pro-union outcome, as this important show reveals, is nonetheless rarely the way things work in American labor today.