God why does my head hurt this morning?
As you all know, one of San Francisco’s largest urgent delivery messenger companies, Professional Messenger voted to 43 to 41 to affiliate with the ILWU-local 6. This comes on the heels of this summer’s vote at Ultra X, the first messenger company in the USA to vote union in the decade.
Last night’s vote will probably receive no press coverage – it’s tough being #2 – who was the second man to walk on the moon? But this vote makes history in many ways:
The votes were brought to a crowd of messengers and union supporters at 9:20 pm and by 10 oclock the votes were counted in Pro Mess’s lunch room. About 30 messengers from Pro and other companies were there, as well as 2 union lawyers, 2 Littler Mendelson lawyers, NLRB officials, Pro-Mess manager and dispatchers, ILWU members (from as far away as Australia and Costa Rica) and the organizers from the ILWU, including Peter Olney, Augustine Ramirez, Jerry Martin, Fred Pecker, and Marcy Rein.
It was a total nailbiter as the NLRB official read the votes one by one – all of us thought that we had lost, judging by all the ‘no’ votes that kept all of us on the edge of our seats. When the 43 to 41 vote count was announced a loud cheer erupted from the crowd, champagne was poured and Pro-Mess managers sulked and filed out the door. This vote will probably end up in the courts, But there is no denying that no matter which way the contested votes go, the odds are in favor of a Union victory.
A lot of us were very surprised at the number of ‘no’ votes – Joel Ritch and his lawyers had waged a relentless war for the last month against the union, with workers being intimidated into voting ‘no’. There was even a Las Vegas vacation dangled in front of the workers, and benefits and raises materialized for the Pro-Messengers, something that never would have happened without the Union campaign.
So even though the morning papers will say nothing about it, Messenger History and ILWU History was made at 1740 Cesar Chavez last night, and shock waves will reverberate through the heads of many messenger company owners. Who is next? Will it be the multi-national corporation DMS, with almost 200 employees? It will be a hard fight, so we need all of your support and prayers.
A special thanks to driver Nato Green, for all his hard work in making this vote happen. Lets keep this ball rolling!!!!
Marc Gunther
