Voting Union in Lexington, Kentucky

Because they know who has their backs, and it's not the city council.

Beverly Fortune at the Herald:

City sanitation workers voted Tuesday to organize and form a union.

They may become members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, a union with 1.6 million members and about 4,000 local units in the United States and Puerto Rico.

Of 165 waste management workers who were eligible, 121 voted Tuesday. To unionize, 50 percent plus one had to vote yes, said Fayette County Clerk Don Blevins, who conducted the election. The vote was 95-26 in favor.

Sanitation worker Dean Chambers said that with a union, many of his co-workers would feel empowered to speak out. "The only way they can get their views heard now is to go to council and speak for three minutes. This way we have a little more power," he said.

Lexington's sanitation workers did not have to suffer the attacks and firings that greet private-sector attempts to organize. For those millions of workers, a new movement seeks to make labor organizing a civil right, earning the same employment protections as race, sex and religion.

Learn more here.

Sign the petition here.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2012/07/31/2278933/lexington-sanitation-workers-vote.html#storylink=cpy