Fear strikes out: Few takers at anti-union press conference

Big business, fronted by the Louisiana Assocation of Business and Industry, failed to draw a big crowd at a fear-mongering press conference, according to this item in The Daily Report.

The idea was to create an impression of mass resistance to the proposed Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier for employees to win the protections of a collective bargaining agreement.

But the "sparsely attended event" apparently fizzled even as LABI mouthpiece Jim Patterson characterized the proposed law as "a coercion of workers into the union fold."

As Louisiana AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Julie Cherry accurately stated, workplace coercion is generally a function of management, not labor.

Said Cherry about the failed effort to picture workers as bogeymen, “There’s a lot of fear out there about what (employee free choice) means to the employer. We see it as an incentive to sit at the table and bargain reasonably.”