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Rogers has been advising other unions on ways to apply pressure, notably the United Food and Commercial Workers.
For two years the UFCW has been battling the Seattle-First National Bank, the largest in the Northwest, to recognize the union as the bargaining agent for the bank's employees. The union has persuaded labor organizations and civic groups to withdraw deposits of more than $125 million from Seafirst. It has also begun to ask other unions to take their pension funds from Seafirst's correspondent banks in an effort to get them to break their ties. Last week the AFL-CIO called for a national boycott of Seafirst by union pension-fund managers.
Many business people regard the tac tic as a form of secondary boycott and possibly illegal. Nonsense, says Rogers:
"Unions must confront giant corporate capital with workers' capital. They must confront interlocking corporate power with interlocking workers' power." In the meantime, labor and business leaders are waiting to see what the new tactic pro duces. If either Stevens or Seafirst is eventually compelled to accept unionization, labor's use of the "corporate campaign" squeeze is certain to increase.