I’m reposting this from Corrente.
To: john_ballbach@vwr.com
To: ed_borger@vwr.com
Dear John Ballbach and Ed Borger,
I'm a scientist at University of Wisconsin - Madison, and have been purchasing scientific supplies from VWR for years. I just heard about your union busting plan - to close VWR's Brisbane CA facility and move operations to Visalia (to be run as a non-union facility).
At this point, I plan to boycott VWR in purchasing scientific supplies for our lab, until and unless VWR reverses its plan (there are alternate suppliers available for almost all your products).
Sincerely,
XXXX XXXXXXXXX
I just sent off the e-mail above and would like to encourage any scientists who feel likewise to express a similar decision. And if you wish to spread word of this, so much the better.
VWR snail-mail address:
John M. Ballbach, CEO
Ed Borger, VP Operations
VWR International, LLC
Radnor Corporate Center
100 Matsonville Rd.
Radnor, PA 19087
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For more information see here, here, here, here, and here.
It's worth noting that VWR plans to fund the facility move in part by using federal and state tax credits intended as an incentive to hire new workers.
Thanks to DCblogger for alerting me to this.
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Addendum:
I've noticed that this boycott call has also been reposted by Mike the Mad Biologist.
A final note. There are a lot of scientific/medical supply companies out there (such that multiple relatively-comparably-priced vendors exist for most products, especially labware), and some are more socially responsible than others (note: CSRHub, which I've linked here, is a crude instrument, but there are many other detailed sources of info on labor relations, environmental practices, etc. for different potential vendors).