Workers Determined to Fight Back!
Jan. 30, 2018 – All the software engineers at Lanetix, Inc., a tech development company, were terminated on Jan. 26, soon after they announced plans to form a unit of The NewsGuild-CWA.
“My coworkers and I, fifteen in all, were fired on Friday in an illegal effort to bust the @news_guild union at @Lanetix,” Bjorn Westergard tweeted. “Those of us who organized only wanted a better company for our friends and coworkers,” he wrote.
The union filed an Unfair Labor Practice complaint with the NLRB on Jan. 29, charging that the firings and other company actions violate federal law.
“We’re going to fight this as hard as we can,” said Cet Parks, executive director of the Washington-Baltimore Local, which is assisting the workers in the union organizing campaign.
Prior to the mass terminations, the company threatened employees for discussing unionizing on a closed instant messaging channel; fired one of the engineers for participating in the group discussions in November, and told employees that anyone who participated “is on management’s shit list.”
On Jan. 16, workers submitted a request for union recognition to management and on Jan. 18, the Guild filed a petition for a vote on unionization with the NLRB.
Eight days later, the remaining engineers and senior engineers were terminated.
The company is calling the firings “layoffs” and has demanded that employees sign a form releasing Lanetix from all claims and promising not to disparage the company in order to be eligible for severance pay.
The company has offices in San Francisco and Arlington, VA, with affected engineers working at both sites.