The Plot of Sorry to Bother You Comes to Life

A bunch of call center workers who work for a particularly evil corporation try to unionize, only to face reprisals from greedy management. Is this a recent Boots Riley movie or real life news story? It’s both!

General Dynamics, the sort of generically-named mega-corporation that you just know must manufacture deadly weapons (check), employs thousands of call center workers, many of whom are currently trying to unionize with the Communications Workers of America. Bloomberg Law reports that the company, keeping perfectly in character, has been trying to intimidate its own employees so intensely that the National Labor Relations Board has charged them with unfair labor practices twice in the past three weeks.

An NLRB regional director said Aug. 31 that the company “interrogated” workers at a Hattiesburg, Miss., call center about union activities, told them they could lose their benefits if they voted to organize in a collective bargaining unit, and suggested other “unspecified reprisals.” A separate regional director 11 days earlier said the company violated federal labor law by banning workers at a Medicare call center in Kentucky from distributing union leaflets in an employee parking lot.

General Dynamics is a major government contractor. You may be interested to learn that last year the Trump administration rolled back an Obama-era rule that required government contractors to disclose such labor violations. How nice.

If this story continues to follow the plot of Sorry to Bother You we may see some General Dynamics executives attacked with giant mutant horse cocks, so stay tuned.