Today, CEOs get contracts that protect their wages and benefits and deny those same protections to their workers. The out-of-state special interests behind S.O.S. continue to defend the broken status quo that puts employee needs at the bottom and allows corporate CEO's to routinely harass, intimidate, coerce and even fire workers struggling to gain a union so they can bargain for better lives. Employees are on an uneven playing field from the first moment they begin exploring whether they want to form a union, and the will of the majority often is denied by strong-arm management tactics.

Meet some of the Missouri workers the broken status quo continues to fail:

HARRY SHARP: Lineman, Power Line Consultants (Farmington, MO)

Harry and his co-workers decided to form a union, because they were alarmed at the unsafe working conditions they faced – working outside in the heat of summer with sub-standard safety equipment and no water or co-workers to give them breaks. One co-worker had to be rushed to the hospital. Even though a majority of the workers voted to form a union in 2006 so they could bargain for safer conditions, the employer has tied the vote up with challenges for two years now. Harry finally had to find a different job because he couldn’t take the risk anymore. “Now I work for a union company where my family has health insurance and I have good equipment.”

LINDA MEYER, reporter, Suburban Journals Newspapers (Wentzville-Warrenton)

In 2002, Linda was among the workers that voted to form a union at the Suburban Journals newspaper in their Wentzville-Warrenton bureau. Over the next year the employer stalled their efforts to begin bargaining on issues important to her and her co-workers. All the while they increased the workloads of the workers that had supported the union, and hired new workers that would not support collective bargaining. The result – even though a majority of workers voted to bargain about important issues at their workplace, they could never get a contract.