The Building and Wood Worker’s International (BWI) joined the IAM in calling out the world’s third largest door and window manufacturer, JELD-WEN, for a series of labor rights violations during an IAM campaign to organize JELD-WEN locations across the U.S. and Canada.
The IAM launched the campaign in response to calls from JELD-WEN workers in Yakima, WA, Chiloquin and Klamath Falls, OR, and Rocklin and Vista, CA. Union volunteers began leafleting sites with information on the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) core labor standards last month. But management, through the help of anti-worker consultants, has begun an aggressive campaign to interfere in their workers’ right to form a union.
“At these sites, local JELD-WEN management would engage in surveillance of union activity which in addition to violating the ILO core labor standards is also a violation of U.S. labor law,” reads a report posted on the BWI website. “To date the worse incident has occurred in Klamath Falls, Oregon, where when union representatives refused to stop leafleting – even though they were clearly on the public right-of-way and not on JELD-WEN property – one supervisor said if they did not stop immediately he would shoot them. Given the recent occurrences of gun violence in the U.S., this is a very serious threat.”
For more on JELD-WEN’s serious labor rights violations, click here.
