Massachusetts Jobs with Justice will hold seven protests in front of Rite Aid drugstores on Friday, April 3 from 4:00 to 6:00 PM.
Groups organizing the protest say that the Rite Aid drugstore chain has been abusing the rights of employees – and provides a "textbook example" of why Congress should pass the "Employee Free Choice Act," reform legislation that would better protect employees who want to form unions by limiting employer interference in the process.
President Barack Obama has promised to sign the new legislation, but big business groups are trying to kill the measure with a $100 million dollar lobbying campaign.
The Massachusetts protests are part of dozens of actions scheduled for April 2 and 3 at Rite Aid stores. Organizers say that Rite Aid and other employers routinely threaten and fire workers who try to exercise their federal right to have a labor union. Western Mass. Jobs with Justice leafleted Rite Aid stores in Springfield, Easthampton, and Greenfield on April 2. Fourteen similar protests took place on February 13 in California, Oregon, Washington and Pennsylvania.
In 2007, the federal government was prepared to charge Rite Aid with 49 labor law violations for threatening and firing employees at the company's distribution center in Lancaster, California, which employs more than 500 workers. Flaws in federal labor laws allowed the company to evade the violations with only a slap on the wrist and promise to behave in the future.
Jobs with Justice is a community-labor coalition that links workers' struggles to help build a larger movement for social and economic justice.
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