Company Employed By DNC Busts Union

Erin Rosa has a story at Kos and a more detailed story at Corporate Mofo entitled, "Telefund, Checkbook Liberalism, and the Exploitation of the Worker," which details IWW efforts to organize Telefund.

When I worked for Telefund, I seem to recall that I was actually paid by Grassroots Campaigns and/or Grassroots Voter Outreach, depending on whether it was a lobby group or PAC. Grassroots, purportedly a sister company of Telefund, works for many of the same progressive organizations. Like Telefund, it has many shops around the country, any number of which can be quickly converted from a canvassing operation to a Telefund operation, or the reverse. Whether intended or not, this constant switching of campaigns and nature-of-work is a built-in resistance to union organizing. For example, many employees who want a sit-down job quit when it switches to a canvass, and many who want an outdoors job quit when they are asked to sit in a room for eight hours on the phone. Similarly, some may like raising funds for PFAW, but may maintain principled opposition to the DNC, in which case they are out of work whenever there is a switch from PFAW to the DNC. There are other mechanisms, like unrealistic quotas and penalties to one's base pay, which contribute to such a high turn-over rate that any worker is left to wonder if the high turn-over is by design. Much of the office directors' labor seems to be absorbed in putting up posters which advertise "campaign" jobs, and then interviewing and training new workers. Supporting the idea that this is union-busting by design is the fact that GCI/GVO and telefund have very few if any long-term, quality, non-management workers who may eventually demand stability, better compensation, or benefits.

Contact the DNC to encourage them to pressure Grassroots and Telefund to clean-up their act, stop busting unions, and treat their workers fairly.