TOP's Vote

The hour-long begging/demanding sessions with Wendy Wendlandt began the actual 4-5 days leading up the Telephone Outreach Project's (TOP's) union vote. Wendlandt (whose office is in L.A., but had never spent more than a moment with anyone of our rank, heretofore) is the national political director for the PIRGs, FFPIR,  Environment California, Pesticide Watch, Greencorps, Earthday 2000/Earthday Resources/The Green Life, etc. (creative titling for the various groups she's helped to create that we all know to be FFPIRG). Wendlandt launched into a couple of hour-long begging sessions with LA TOP as a group. She stated that she "loved" the organization, and knew that letting the union in would be bad- especially the Teamsters’ union. She kept saying "anybody but the Teamsters," as if the Teamsters protecting us would be an embarrassment for them. The way she kept saying this, “C'mon, you guys… the Teamsters?” was very elitist, and we let her know this. She claimed to care about us and asked us why we hadn't come to her with our feelings before deciding to unionize. We reminded Wendy that for years, she's never given any of us the time of day, that she's always kept her distance and had always been unapproachable. Wendlandt kept citing the bad history of the Teamsters, and we kept reminding her that we decided upon the Teamsters (in keeping with the LA door) because they were the strongest and only union that we felt stood a chance with the lawyer-led core of FFPIR. We also reminded her that if the Teamsters are so awful on environmental issues, and FFPIR is awful on civil/human/worker rights, that together, all would be covered. She kept saying that we should not "let them in."  

Nancie Koenigsberg's speech came in these last days before the vote. Koenigsberg acknowledged that FFPIR is structured on a corporate model, and that if we unionized, she would hate to see our work sent out to other calling rooms. Then came the emotional plea from Jennifer Shanley. She proceeded to tell us of her college days, and all of her various accomplishments.  She threw in that she cared about gay rights. We wondered why she (and everyone at FFPIR) didn't seem to care about workers’ rights to unionize, and would fight to the end to deny these rights to a few people in Los Angeles. Shanley went on to say to the room that if we vote a union in, it will be a “personal insult against her.” This was clearly orchestrated by her higher-ups to invoke guilt in the calling room, as Shanley has always been extremely social with her employees, as well as her directors. We continued to wonder why the organization would go through so much elaborate planning, squandering precious time and expenses, to keep unions out. (This includes the huge amount of resources we knew they'd spent to try to stop the door canvassers.) What didn't they want "outsiders protecting their workers" to see?

The final coup came when LA TOP was visited on clock-time and break-time by two of PIRG’s lawyer/lobbyists. Steve Blackledge and Dan Jacobson returned to schmooze us and lobby our staff against unionizing as best they could. Such an attempt at persuasion by these two highly-skilled, paid lawyer/lobbyists demonstrated what types of people we were dealing with. These were people who, at their highest and lowest levels, thought that we needed their permission to exercise our basic civil/human rights to unionize in the workplace. This room of thirteen callers, having seen this gross and overzealous attempt at union-busting, voted in the Teamsters with ten yes votes, and two no votes. Of the two no votes, one was a pro-union caller (we'll call him "Corey") who confessed to voting against the union only out of a feeling of obligation to Jenny Shanley for giving him regular rides home. The second no vote was a campus organizer from San Diego, who appeared mysteriously in the TOP office right after the petition was filed, only to disappear just as quickly after the vote.

As much of a struggle as it had been to win our vote, this was nothing compared to the struggle that would follow just to keep the office open.