Over 39 hardworking years at Kroger store #328 in Kingsport, Tennessee, Judy Cook had a perfect performance record.
She received glowing reviews, was never written up, was never late and hadn’t even taken a sick day for 25 years. Then one day, out of the blue, Judy was suspended without pay. Kroger charged her with holding back marked-down items for herself, rather than putting them on the shelves. But she had done no such thing. “It totally destroyed me,” Judy said, “because I had devoted my life to Kroger. I could not believe they could do anything like this. It killed my soul.” Now, if she wasn’t a union member, Judy would have probably just lost her job. But her union, UFCW Local 400, filed a grievance and eventually, not only did Judy get her job back, but she won full back pay for the five-and-a-half weeks she was suspended. “Without our union,” Judy says, “I shudder to think what things would be like.” This story has a bittersweet ending. Judy was so distressed at her ordeal that after her return to work, she decided to retire. But before she left, Judy made it her mission to encourage as many people as she possibly could at her store to join the union. And she succeeded, signing up dozens of new members, including one person who had refused to join for 10 long years. And, she proudly says, her own daughter is now carrying the torch forward for the union at Kroger. Judy and her union rep will be guests on today’s edition of “Your Rights At Work” at 2pm here on WPFW. For all the latest local labor calendar listings, go to dclabor.org and click on Calendar. In today's labor history, on this date in 1940, an amendment to the 1939 Hatch Act, a federal law whose main provision prohibits federal employees from engaging in partisan political activity, was amended to also cover state and local employees whose salaries include any federal funds. Today’s labor quote is from the Declaration of Women's Rights, adopted at the Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York, which began on this date in 1848. The Declaration of Women's Rights, which says: “The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her.”
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