Dr. Pepper’s malpractice. The Doctor is out to kill unions.
Over coffee the other day a colleague asked, “Why teachers?”
We were talking about going back to work in a hostile anti-teacher atmosphere neither one of us had experienced ever as teachers.
“I don’t think it’s just about teachers,” I suggested. “In some ways it’s about the fact that we’re union. Public sector unions are the strongest part of the union movement. Yes, I think this is as much about us being union as it is about us being teachers.”
Check out what is going on in a town near Rochester, New York.
Union workers are on strike against Dr. Pepper and the company that makes Snapple and Motts apple juice.
Ari Paul in The Nation writes:
Throughout the twenty-two bargaining sessions, the company made its intentions clear. At no point did its representatives say the company was in trouble and needed to cut operational costs to survive. Far from it—DPS posted a $555 million profit last year. So why was the company driving such a hard bargain? The way the union’s bargaining committee saw it, the company knew unemployment in western New York was high, so it wanted to cash in on the suffering.
“They said that if we can’t meet our finances on the contract they’re offering us, then we need to sell our houses,” said label operator and union bargaining committee member Bruce Beal, adding that a company official said that workers needed to think of themselves as commodities, like “soybeans or oil,” and that as supply rises, the price goes down.
Flashback: Seven years ago when our Local was on strike, a member of the school board sat across the table from us and said, “You teachers have to realize that to us you’re nothing but a cost that needs to be contained.”
Dr. Pepper. Same drink. Different bottle.
