Declaring "enough is enough," workers at the Line & Tone Group in Mahwah, N.J., voted two to one for representation by New York 1L.

Local 1L Organizing Director Jose Velasquez said the 35 workers at Line & Tone gave management every opportunity to make good on promises to make things better.

Instead, workers got slammed with a 10 percent wage cut, were forced to work an additional 2-1/2 hours per week, and were punished with health insurance payments that "were going through the roof" while company owners didn't have to pay for their own insurance, Velasquez explained.

But the bottom line, Velasquez stressed, was that the workers were fed up with "not having a voice at work. Management didn't ask for input, they didn't ask how the plant can be run more efficiently. It hurts. We're the people producing the work, but our opinions don't count."

Local 1L had worked with many members of the group the year before during an organizing campaign at Target Graphics in Boonton, N.J. But then that group found out that Target planned to merge with Line & Tone – a full service commercial shop with prepress, press, bindery, and mailing operations.

After the merger news, workers "decided not to go through with the campaign. They wanted to give the new company a second chance. They knew the situation at Target was bad, and they hoped Line & Tone would be more worker friendly. It turned out it wasn't," Velasquez said.

Line & Tone workers already knew there was a wage gap between their pay and that of other Local 1L members, Velasquez said. After the 10 percent wage cut – despite promises to the contrary – "they decided this is the time."

The interest was strong, and the campaign moved fast from the beginning, with eight people signing up to be on the in-plant organizing committee at the first meeting, Velasquez said. By the second meeting, about 50 percent had signed representation cards. "Then we decided to go public to protect the in-plant activists. Before we knew it, we had 70 or 75 percent of the cards signed," he said.

Because U.S. labor law prohibits employers from firing workers for union activity, he said, "it was a good thing we did go public quickly, because we found out the company's attorney is well-known as a union-buster, and their jobs may have been at risk."

Newly elected shop delegate Jim Galante told InRegister, Local 1L's newsletter, that one of the highlights of the campaign for him was handing out Cracker Jacks to workers as they were about to be forced to watch yet another anti-union video. He said workers also had fun making rolls of toilet paper out of the company's anti-union leaflets that the local maintained "seriously distorted facts about Local One's expenses."

Local 1L countered with its own brochure for the campaign with the theme "Enough Is Enough." The brochure featured photos of shop activists and some of their families with their comments about why they wanted the union.

Velasquez said creativity and humor help to dispel the fears and frustrations that are often encountered in an organizing campaign.

It "shows potential members we know how to deal with the everyday stresses associated with organizing their shops," Velasquez said. "When you can explain to a potential member that changes will not happen overnight because of the way the system is slanted against working people and that sometimes legal matters are not expeditiously addressed as we would like, a good sense of humor is just what the doctor ordered."

"Getting involved and having your voice heard was something that started at the very first meeting," Velasquez said. "Minimizing – and sometimes eliminating – all of the fear about organizing happens through education and is the number one reason people organize. It's not something the organizing department does per se but rather what workers do when they take the bull by the horns and self-organize."

Velasquez credited the "total team effort" for the victory. He praised the contributions, strength and solidarity of the in-plant committee and members of the Local 1L organizing team that included John Pavone and Michael Doklia.

The Local 1L organizers "were instrumental in this win. John helped with the flyers and they took part in committee meetings and brought a lot to the table. They made it that much easier," Velasquez said.

Local 1L is not resting on its laurels. It has developed a new tool – a four-color leaflet titled "Organize" that it said speaks to the core differences between employment in a non-union shop and a union shop.

While the contract for Line & Tone is negotiated, local organizers already are going "full blast" on a campaign at another large New Jersey printing operation. They said they are getting a good response from the workforce, and they think one of the key reasons is "the union's boldness and in-your-face attitude about getting out the message of the benefits of union membership."