Alliance Activists Join One Man Protest in RTP

Alliance@IBM Activists Travel to Raleigh (RTP) to Show Solidarity

Since early March, Brian Costine, an Alliance@IBM Voting Member, has waged a one-man protest against IBM, his employer for 25 years. He spends 90 minutes each morning protesting in front of IBM's campus in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina (RTP) before starting his work day. Costine says IBM is actively trying to force longtime workers like him off the payroll and out of future benefits by giving them unfairly negative performance reviews. He plans to continue the protests for a year.

On Sunday, April 30, a group of Alliance@IBM activists drove down to RTP. The group was led by Bill Costine, Brian’s brother and an East Fishkill employee and Bill McGreevy, an employee at the Southbury, CT site. On Monday morning, in solidarity with Brian, they joined his protest outside the main gate to the plant. They held signs and waved at passing cars for over an hour, receiving mostly positive responses from people on their way to work.

Following the protest, “the Bills” used their employee badges to enter the RTP site, where they distributed flyers to break areas, rest rooms and cafeterias throughout the site. At the cafeteria in Building 203, they were confronted by a person who identified himself as the manager of that cafeteria. He angrily insisted that they were not allowed to distribute union literature without permission. They calmly educated him that the right to distribute union material is guaranteed under the NLRA (National Labor Relations Act) and that any interference is a violation of Federal labor law. When they finished the distribution, they got into their vehicle and made the ten-hour drive back home!