Vote could resurrect workers union at Woodman’s
JANESVILLE — Workers at Woodman’s Food Market in Janesville will vote in December whether to recover union representation they lost earlier this year.
About 250 workers at the Janesville store are eligible to vote in the election scheduled for Dec. 11-12.
The upcoming election is the result of a petition from the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1473.
According to the petition filed with the National Labor Relations Board, a “substantial number” of employees wish to be represented for purposes of collective bargaining, and they want Local 1473 as their representative.
The union is familiar to Woodman’s employees; it represented the workers for decades—until earlier this year.
The union and Woodman’s management have been at odds for nearly two years.
In early 2008, more than one-third of the 950 employees at Woodman’s stores in Janesville, Beloit and Madison signed a petition to decertify Local 1473.
A few weeks later, more than 500 Woodman’s employees signed a second petition that called for Woodman’s to immediately pull its recognition of Local 1473 as the employees’ bargaining unit.
The case generated charges and countercharges of unfair labor practices, weeks of testimony, thousands of pages of transcripts and hundreds of exhibits.
As the NLRB investigated into this year, the two sides agreed to a private settlement that essentially dismissed all allegations and removed the union as the employees’ bargaining unit, said Irv Gottschalk, the NLRB’s regional director in Milwaukee.
The settlement apparently included a provision that the union could again try to organize Woodman’s workers.
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Nov 21, 2009 at 3:39 p.m.
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Macdaddy: Why in the world would Woodman's ever leave? That place pulls in tons of money every 24 hours.
Nov 21, 2009 at 3:38 p.m.
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You forgot that the UAW forced them to have poor leadership, make bad decisions, bloated management, poor quality and ugly cars.
Nov 21, 2009 at 12:46 p.m.
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Anyone with any sort of knowledge would see that labor costs were the largest reason along with retiree benefits that caused GM to cut its losses and file bankruptcy protection. All those were because the union got those benefits during contracts.
therefore...the union ran GM out of town. Made it so they had to be closer to other locations and consolidate plants. It was bound to happen the fact that people stopped by $50,000 SUVs only sped up the process.
I have never seen a union help anyone that was motivated, worked harder and was very intelligent. They seem to protect the unmotivated, unambitious, and therefore the dumb workers.
And to think all those GM workers paid for the union to screw them in the end. haha
Nov 21, 2009 at 11:56 a.m.
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Didn't you hear? The UAW called up everyone in America and told them to stop buying SUVs. I thought everyone knew that.
Nov 21, 2009 at 2:14 a.m.
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The Union ran GM out of town? I thought it was because they went belly up!
Nov 21, 2009 at 1:54 a.m.
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the union ran GM out of janesville, hope Woodman workers wise up before their jobs leave too.
Nov 20, 2009 at 10:31 p.m.
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"The union and Woodman’s management have been at odds for nearly two years." Union and management not getting along. Who'd have thought?
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