On the Line by Daisy Pitkin;

Author:Daisy Pitkin; [Pitkin;, Daisy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781643752976
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2022-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Before resting our case, we had to call to the stand every worker who had given affidavits in order to enter into the record every detail of every legal violation with which the company had been charged, and then to corroborate those details with secondary testimony. Santiago testified. And then Cecilia and Antonia and Analía and Lupe and Isabel and Reina and Beatriz, and over a dozen others of your coworkers.

Though he had quit the factory and stopped responding to us, Raúl testified as well. We had subpoenaed all of the witnesses, so they would have a record of their need to be excused from work in the factory, but Raúl didn’t respond to his at first, and Paul had to follow up by phone and impress the seriousness of not showing up when he was called. So he did show up, but he waited outside the building under a tree for his turn, instead of sitting in the union-side waiting room. Under cross-examination, the company lawyer discredited his testimony by forcing him to reveal that he had offered to sell a list of union supporters to El Mero Mero and to other laundry companies in Phoenix.

Every one of the organizers who had taken part in the blitz had to be flown back to Phoenix from wherever in the world they were, in order to testify about the card-signing process and about which workers had signed cards with them and where and when they had signed. This was the process we had to undergo to enter the cards into evidence, to prove that a majority of workers had wanted to unionize before the company launched its attacks and successfully flipped fifteen workers to an anti-union vote.

On the night the organizers arrived, I walked into the motel bar as some of them were placing bets, but when I asked what they were betting on (this was a hearing, not an election), no one wanted to say. Finally, Dario told me they were betting on how long it would be before I was promoted to organizing coordinator, a step above lead organizer and a position that would move me out of the staff union bargaining unit and into management. You’re white, and you went to college, he said. That’s just how it works. The adamance of my response surprised even me. I would never move to management, I said. I wanted to stay close to the fight, on the ground, with the workers, I said. We’ll see, he said gently. No one meant any offense.

The next day, the company began its defense. La Sandra and El Mero Mero testified, as well as most of the department leads and some of the workers who were against the union, whom we had started calling Las Viejas (the Old Ladies), a disparaging title we used in part to make light of the outsize influence they held in the factory. They testified that the company had made no anti-union threats, that the company did not surveil

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