Humor Latest Weapon in Battle for Workplace Rights

(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)Humor is the latest weapon in the battle over collective bargaining rights. The AFL-CIO recently released three funny short videos showing what happens when workers don’t get a voice at the bargaining table. In Negotiatin’ Like It’s 1999 workers literally run into a closed door when they try to negotiate, while in Why Is Everyone So Down On Child Labor (r) company negotiators bargain with themselves to drive down wages, rights and benefits, and in Who Needs a Pension When You Can Have a Pizza Party (or Piñata) bosses substitute a lame pizza party for real improvements on the job. The videos are featured on a new AFL-CIO website — Collective Bargaining: Real people. Real Impact —that serves up facts, fun and real-world stories about what the power to bargain means to working people. Area unions may want to link to the site or videos on their own websites, and they’ll be useful for shop stewards looking for new, creative ways to show how collective bargaining enables working people who are union members to negotiate with their employers to determine their terms of employment, including pay, benefits, hours, leave, health and safety policies, ways to balance work and family and more.