I wanted to talk about our first “captive audience” meeting that occurred on Tuesday with the senior VP and our HR director. Ever since the acquisition, there has been a song playing my head by the Who, called “We Don’t Get Fooled Again”. One of the lines from this song is: "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss". In the meeting that I attended, many of you reiterated a common message of “show me the changes”. I have been trying to share the optimism that many of you feel with the regime change. Still, yesterday’s meeting left me with a sour taste in my mouth. An excellent question was raised by one of our co-workers, which basically asked, “it’s nice to talk about the changes, but when will they occur?” As you probably know, the standard retort was, “due to the ongoing situation with the unionizing, we cannot tell you these changes, but instead will tell you how other call centers operate”. Well, that’s great, but I want to know what you’re going to do for me. Another quote from our HR director that I wrote down was “there are no promises and we will not answer the changes that will occur here”. I left that meeting feeling more frustrated than when I walked into the training room.

Next, I wanted to touch on the anti-union stance that the company is obviously taking at HHT. Of course, most of us know that any unionizing attempt is going to be resisted by management. Why would our dictators…I mean leadership want to give up some of their power and make a level playing field? We know that the organizing efforts have been made known to HHT through different means, such as official letters and the betrayal of a lead worker’s trust. Our HR director made the comment that they will not interfere with the organizing process, but are opposed to third parties. Oh, really? Tell me something I don’t know. The fact of the matter is that federal law was already broken by a lead worker that cornered 4 health advisors and asked about union sympathies. Most of this centered on signing authorization cards to be represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 911. This was a blatant violation of federal law and the individuals that were questioned have been given appropriate paperwork to file formal charges with the National Labor Relations Board. It seems that HHT is 0-4 when it comes to following the law. More importantly, it is very underhanded that management will be using lead workers to do their dirty work. Nonetheless, it’s still a violation of the law to have lead workers, or as they are affectionately known as “the Gestapo”, to do this. I am waiting for the time when we have some barbed wire, German shepherds, and searchlights to make sure we are in our chairs 24-7.

More to follow…