Retaliation against TOP callers

On September 22, 2005, LA's Telephone Outreach Project callers (TOP) voted in the Teamster's Union with a 10-2 “yes” vote. As divinely proud as both the door and phone offices were to have gotten even this far,  we knew that after our yes-vote, FFPIR were likely to pull more of their usual workplace-rights busting tactics. 

After the yes-vote and our congratulatory break-time meeting outside with our union rep, Emilio, we proceeded indoors, back to the office, to get back to work that night. You could have cut the tension in the air with a knife. The festive, over-friendly atmosphere in the weeks and final days leading up to TOP's union vote was very suddenly brought to an icy-cold halt the very moment after we voted the union in. The flown-in higher-ups flew right on out! It was completely mechanized, and truly chilling to witness. 

The "hiring-freeze" in both the door office and TOP office was still in effect. Of course, the PIRGs wouldn't want us to poison the minds of any possible new-hires with this civil/labor/human rights foolishness. It would be much easier to "pick us off" one by one without any new hires in the way to foil their plan. This way they could easily shut down (as they've done before) and start over somewhere else with minimum wagers demanding nothing.

We held weekly meetings after our shifts, off premises, to discuss the modest items that we wanted in our contract. We included decent conditions that any worker is entitled to (especially a worker whose employer has the words "public interest" in its title). The atmosphere in the office was always ice-cold, but we persevered with our work, knowing that we must continue to do our jobs well.

On Tuesday, November 15^th, almost two months after our union election, TOP directors made the first firing since the petition. Three nights later, on Thursday the 17^th, the TOP directors stormed around the room, taking our strongest, most outspoken union organizers aside (including our three union shop stewards) and fired them all in one night- five in total. This was done in ambush-like fashion which threw the room into a tailspin. These five callers were being monitored that night from another room. Their calls were supposedly dispositioned incorrectly.  This means that (according to the directors) the callers were not accepting their "no" responses. In one instance, a terrific and well respected caller named Matthew Scanlon (who was about to become a trainer) had spoken to a caretaker for a member who now suffered from Alzheimer’s. There is no disposition on the computer field for calls like this one, so he positioned it as "member died."  For years, we'd all asked about such grey-area calls, and supervisors had told us to "use our own discretion." It had been well-established that if a caller is absolutely unable to speak with a member because they had died, or are unfortunately near death, that we were trusted to do the right thing for the organization and disposition the member so that the organization doesn't waste any more time or money attempting to contact an incapacitated former member. (Additionally, it hurts the pledge rate/evaluation numbers that dictate our pay, and no one wants to or should have to take a "no" when it does not belong to them.) The "member died" option is the only way to achieve that. No one abuses it.

The night of the mass firings, TOP directors Jennifer Shanley, Faye Hopper, Will Isenberg, and other assorted “pirgbots” from the "grants" area on the other side of our office (like Lucy Williams, the celebrity coordinator) began to celebrate. As the remaining six callers were busy trying to continue on with our work, these supervisors laughed very loudly, cranked up extremely loud music in the office which streamed out into the calling area, making it very difficult to speak with members. They opened up a box of chocolates and enjoyed them openly with their fellow pirgbots, as they danced around the calling room. They were playing video games on the office computer, and we kept hearing this outrageously cranked-up voice of a video character saying "you die now!"  As if this wasn't quite enough, Faye Hopper was laughing and bouncing up and down on big blue yoga ball in the office. It's all quite unbelievable, but we witnessed it with our own eyes and ears. Apparently, they'd finally been given the "go-ahead" by FFPIR administrators/lawyers to execute a mass-firing of all of our union stewards. 

What an image… these spoiled, little Ivy-League, silver-spooner kids, who pretend to fight the "good fight" in life, (and they do believe that pretending is enough), celebrating their own self-perceived power to just shit on the labor rights of a room full of hard working older people without silver spoons, who'd been working for them for years. It was diabolical, to say the least.  Witnessing these children, who know nothing about real-life, being taught by this so-called “organization” to lie, cheat, and manipulate the law, is hard to swallow. These kids are so well-programmed by the PIRG/FUND to believe that anything they do on behalf of this group(s) is okay! No longer even seeing themselves, they have absolutely zero conscience about any of it. Seeing the disturbing, overzealous protection of this group by these childish mouthpieces makes one shudder. Anyone who suffers the serious misfortune to work for this empire (and see the truth) will be, as we are, in scary hands. What is it that so terrifies PIRG/FUND about their employees unionizing? Does it frighten them that since they've claimed poverty for so long, in regards to treating employees better, that the union would have gone into their books and discovered, among many other things, that they are quite capable of treating their people better?  FFPIR wants to make sure no one connects the dots in the books of their empire. They train children to behave in this manner to put a shiny little face on the whole package, too. And where else would these deceitfully trained children do their bidding, but right under “Caesar Chavez," whom they'd so artfully, yet deceitfully HUNG!

LA has (or had) a great room of very hard workers. All five callers who were fired that night were fired for unprecedented reasons, all violating past practice. One caller was fired for “faking” wrong numbers to avoid her "no" responses. Brandi is an honest person and was also a trainer. Before the union vote Brandi was admired and befriended by these supervisors. Now, six of the twelve petitioners had been fired in two nights, taking the number down to six "little people." It was eerie and lonely and weird- just how FFPIR wanted us to feel. The PIRG empire thought that they had destoyed our union, because they had left (in their opinion) the most docile of us who hadn't initially been the strongest union-organizers. We six had certainly been on board, we just hadn't been, to date, the most outspoken of the group, and none of us was steward, co-steward or anything. The directors thought that we would crumble. We did not. Because our Teamsters representative Emilio Arias has stood beside us, refusing to give up (without even a contract b/c of PIRG's stalling, which means we're not even paying union dues yet) we continued. All of us now act as co-stewards.

After the new year, one of the six of us filed for mental disability, citing the stress of witnessing the union-busting tactics of the PIRG/FUND, the firings, and the onerous work environment. This caller is now on an indefinite leave of absence, receiving disability compensation, as the state has found merit in his claim. We find merit as well.

As of this writing, it is now February 14^th, 2006. Our union vote was almost five months ago. The five of us have been working alone in this large, empty office, while our directors have been putting us on more difficult campaigns. We've been wondering where all of our calling numbers have gone.  Maybe, like Nancie Koenigsberg had said before the vote, our lists could have been sent out to other phone rooms. There is also the crucial matter of almost everyone’s pay plummeting. This, also, is  unprecedented. Even callers like Connie, who had often been among the top callers in the country (before the vote) has seen her pay drop. Nothing in her calling had changed. Nothing in anyone's calling has changed. These have always been excellent callers, but their pay was sinking after the union vote. Obviously, if our directors could get our pay low enough, they could close the office before having to sign a union contract.