Allstate Agents Association Hopes Affiliating With OPEIU Will Encourage More Agents To Join Them

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.laborradio.org/Channels/Story.aspx?ID=1524761

8/18/2011

By Doug Cunningham

When the National Association of Professional Allstate Agents formalizes it's affiliation with OPEIU, the agent's association Executive Director Jim Fish hopes it will lead to more Allstate agents joining the association. Fish says Allstate Agents were forcibly switched from employee into independent contractor status by Allstate in 2000. Since then conditions for the agents have gotten worse. They decided to join OPEIU to improve things on several fronts.

: "The company controls everything they do practically and they are firing agents at a record number for missing quotas and are also looking to reduce compensation by 20 percent."

Fish says OPEIU gives his agents more power to get improvements in their relationship with Allstate.

: "The financial muscle of the OPEIU is going to help us in legislative efforts, lobbying efforts. Plus I believe it will motivate agents to join our group and of course with that comes strength in numbers."

[bluedeminredstate]

1. Thanks for all you do

in keeping DU informed on the labor front.

It's so been discouraging to see the larger picture of what the GOP has been doing and plans to keep doing to unions in this country.
Somehow, union and labor have been turned into dirty words along with liberal. The indecent executive compensation continues to go up while employees are expected to shoulder all the belt-tightening. I just don't understand how the average American doesn't seem to grasp the basic concept of fairness. It just seems so sensible that the Koch brothers should NOT be allowed to purchase Wisconsin legislators in order to bust up Wisconsin labor unions (and on to Ohio, Michigan, New Jersey, etc.). I think most Americans should be able to agree on that.

But the fact that this cancer is creeping all over the country, state-by-state, so that a handful of mega-billionaires can keep hoarding all the wealth for themselves is so obscene and anti-American that I am just in a state of disbelief at what is happening. They don't even try the fig leaf disguises anymore. It's the in-your-face approach.
And they're the ones calling workers "union thugs"? Talk about thuggery...

Anyway, thank you for continuing to educate and inform. I read your posts and it's evident how much of your life you devote to this issue.

:patriot: