INK: January 07, 2011

by | Jan 7, 2011 | Labor Relations Ink

inkquill22 Labor Relations INK

In this issue:

  • Union Bailout Update
  • Storm Center Over Wisconsin
  • Unions, Crime, and the Mob
  • Labor Relations Insight, Social Media Spotlight, Sticky Fingers and more…

Labor Relations Insight by Phillip Wilson

EFCA, we hardly knew ye.

With this issue of INK we finally officially lay the Employee Free Choice Act to rest. While the writing’s been on the wall for a while unions continued to threaten action on the bill during the lame-duck session of the 111th Congress. With the swearing in of the 112th Congress this week, I think even the strongest EFCA supporters must now admit it is officially dead.

If you’ve been reading INK recently you know that EFCA hasn’t really been the issue for a while. The action has been – and will continue to be – at the agency level. For example, three days before Christmas the NLRB put a big lump of coal in nearly every private employer’s stocking.

On December 22nd the NLRB filed a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that will require every employer covered by the National Labor Relations Act to post a notice explaining some of the rights employees have under the Act. By the NLRB’s own admission they aren’t sure how many companies this covers, but they estimate at least 6 million companies will have to post the notice.

When I say “some of the rights” of course I am referring to the fact that the notice almost exclusively focuses on the parts of the Act that help unions while completely ignoring other aspects of the law that unions don’t like employees to know about.

The current majority members of the NLRB are putting the full weight of the federal government behind their belief that all companies should be unionized. This notice posting requirement is just one of numerous regulatory and decisional changes we anticipate over the next couple of years.

Economist George Stigler won the Nobel Prize in economics in 1982. One of his core contributions to economics was the concept of “regulatory capture.” Regulatory capture is when a public agency instead advances the special interests of the group it supposed to regulate. The agencies are called “captured agencies.”

If you look at the regulatory agenda of the National Labor Relations Board, Department of Labor and the National Mediation Board I think it is fair to ask whether these are captured agencies. They are led by former union officers, employees or advocates. They are very clearly doing their best to directly help unions.

What can employers do to defend against the actions of these captured agencies? First, stay informed. This newsletter is dedicated to keeping our clients and friends up to date on these changes and to provide our best recommendations about how to respond to them. If you didn’t sign up for our recent urgent action call on the NLRB posting requirements I encourage you to take a look.

Even more important, do everything you can to protect your direct relationship with your employees. Here at Labor Relations Institute we believe strongly that direct relationships between employees and management are far superior to indirect, third party relationships. We spend countless hours each year helping our clients earn and protect what we call the “direct relationship privilege.” No matter what the regulatory environment, if your employees prefer working directly with you they won’t join a union.

These two items should be numbers one and two on your 2011 resolution list.

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Union Bailout Update

Since it is acknowledged that any prospect of the Employee Free Choice Act becoming “law” has died with last year’s mid-term elections, we have discontinued the use of the term “EFCA Update” for our newsletter. However, as the NLRB continues to prove by both current actions and revelations of future objectives that it is “pro-union” all the way, it remains prudent to track governmental action that continues to tilt the playing field in favor of Big Labor. You’ll now find that content under the new title “Union Bailout Update.”

The intent of Big Labor to get their money’s worth from the administration they “bought and paid for” in 2008 is still in full bloom, despite the recent election setback. In case you need a reminder, this recent article recaps some of the NLRB actions to date, and lists projected action based on comments of NLRB members.

To start, the board has overturned elections for the following reasons:

• Company observer was too closely aligned to management.
• Employer’s supervisors were too close to voting area.
• Security guards watched employees who were engaged in union activity.
• Employer restricted the wearing of union T-shirts even though the employer presented evidence that it had consistently maintained a strict uniform policy.
• Management solicited grievances, even though the process was consistent with practice in effect before union-organizing activity.
• Prohibited an employer from refusing to hire a union “salt,” even though the employer had a good faith belief that the salt did not intend to have long-term employment with the employer.

The board has indicated its intent to rule in future cases:

• To restrict the definition of “supervisor,” making it more difficult to have individuals who perform supervisory functions excluded from proposed bargaining units.
• To require the inclusion of employees of staffing agencies into voting units of regular employees.
• To eliminate the charitable exceptions from no solicitation/no distribution rules.
• To prohibit supervisors from joining discussions between employees on the merits of unionization.
• To prohibit restrictions on the use of e-mail for union-organizing purposes.
• To prohibit employers from having rules prohibiting undesirable conduct such as making false or abusive statements or criticizing the company to other employees or the public because the prohibition “chills” union organizing.
• To prohibit employers from keeping union organizers off its property.

Some of the new rules the board is considering include:

• Shorten the time between the date of petition for an election and the election itself. This could be anywhere from 5 to 14 days.
• Prohibit “captive audience” meetings.
• Require employers to permit union representatives to enter the employer’s facility to campaign to employees, including hand billing.
• Limit or eliminate the employer from the process of determining an appropriate unit of employees for a vote and the time and place of the balloting, leaving all such discussions to the union and Board only.
• Requiring all employers to post (via bulletin board, email and web/intranet) a listing of employees’ rights to organize (conveniently ignoring rights to NOT organize – you’ve all received the email regarding the conference calls we’ve used to discuss the impact of this rule)
• Extending the right to organize to intermittent or temporary employees

The board’s general counsel is calling for “special remedies” to penalize employers during organizing campaigns, including:

• The use of court injunctions for any “wrongful termination” action
• “Expedited” investigations for wrongful termination cases
• Force employers to have read aloud any message sent by the Board chastising an employer for unfair labor practices
• Force employers to give a union access to their company bulletin boards and computer networks
• Forcing employers to provide employee names and home addresses to unions

If in doubt about the board’s effort to achieve “EFCA” via regulatory action, the GC’s memorandum announcing these measures stated, “The protection of employee free choice regarding unionization is a keystone of the Agency’s mission, and I am committed to making the principle of employee free choice meaningful [italics added].”

What the DOL isn’t doing is making it easy for Americans to keep an eye on corrupt union activity. The Office of Labor Management Statistics (OLMS) was supposed to release an annual report tracking labor unions and evidence of corruption in union leadership in January 2010, but the report is still “missing in action.” Don Todd, head of the OLMS under the Bush administration, is convinced that the motive behind the tardiness is purely political.
For their part, new Republicans in Congress have at least taken “cosmetic” action by renaming the Education and Labor committee the Education and Workforce committee.

Two organizations, Americans for Tax Reform and Alliance for Worker Freedom, have initiated an effort to engage Congress to role back the recent National Mediation Board rule change. Last year, the NMB changed the rules to make it easier for unions to win elections under NMB jurisdiction. A coalition lead by the two groups has written to Reps. John Mica (R-Fla.) and Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), urging them to oppose the rule change.
On the state front, legislators in Indiana are proposing two bills that would make Indiana a right-to-work state. Republican Governor Mitch Daniels says he believes in the idea, but that now may not be the time to attempt such a move. “It’s a very legitimate issue,” said Daniels. “But I think it’s too big to do without having discussed it out in the open first. And I’ll also say I think it would have the potential — just tactically — to possibly reduce or wreck the chances for education reform and local government reform and criminal justice reform and the things we have a wonderful chance to do.”

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Storm Center Over Wisconsin

Between November and December 2010, four University of Wisconsin campuses filed for union representation election with the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission. The American Federation of Teachers-Wisconsin spearheaded a card signing campaign across the campuses of UW-La Crosse, UW-River Falls, UW-Stevens Point, and UW-Stout. Faculty at UW-Eau Claire and UW-Superior elected AFT-Wisconsin to represent them in the spring of 2010.

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ASA Pitches In With Unite Here

The American Sociological Association pulled their 5000 conference attendees from two Chicago hotels that were scheduled to receive the guests in August during the annual affair. The announcement came one day before a planned Unite Here one-day strike. According to Sally Hillsman, the association’s executive officer, “our members have been concerned that we meet in hotels where workers are treated properly in terms of wages and other working conditions.

Unite Here manages a web site designed to steer guests away from hotels that either are not unionized, or are experiencing contract disputes. Perhaps a better use for the site would be for businesses owners to find non-unionized hotels upon which to bestow their patronage!

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Social Media Spotlight

We mentioned in our Social Media Strategy Call a couple of weeks ago that companies should set up social media “listening” tools, and spend some time researching the kinds of sites and sources that might provide ammunition for organizing drives and/or corporate campaign tactics. We pointed out a recent site that tracks subsidies provided to businesses, and mentioned how information provided by that sight could be used in this fashion. This story highlights how the information has already been used against one such company (IKEA).

In a Canadian court case, after an 18-month tussle, a settlement was reached between Walmart and the UFCW over trademark infringement on a UFCW-managed web site. The only visible impact on the web property was the elimination of a mark that looked similar to the Walmart logo – the rest of the site remains pretty much as was. Even though the details of the settlement remain undisclosed, UFCW Canada National President Wayne Hanley called it “a huge victory for Walmart workers and their ability to freely communicate on the Internet.”

In New York, workers at a plant decided to take their organizing efforts underground to circumvent any counter-organizing tactics by the company, so they set up a private blog to communicate strategy and plan their campaign. The anonymous nature of the site allowed employees to comment and discuss without having to disclose their real names. Sam Fratto, a business manager for the local involved, said about the site, “This was basically like having a 24-hour-a-day union and campaign meeting. It got the workers involved and allowed people to weigh in with questions and concerns before or after their shifts.”

The company eventually found out about the blog and began to monitor its contents. They also launched a site of their own, but unfortunately it did not allow for dialogue, which only seemed to serve the union’s interests.

Labor pundits and organizations have picked up on the success and highlighted the effort, holding it up as a model organizing strategy.

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NOTICE: Social Media Listening Tools SPECIAL OFFER

So many of our INK readers responded to our offer for a Social Media Strategy session that we had to design a webinar to handle the requests. It became obvious after doing several of the calls and dealing with questions on the webinars that some companies needed help setting up one of our key recommendations: tools to listen for chatter about your company in the social media sphere.

If you need help, LRI will set up your Google reader account, create a series of custom alerts to feed into the reader, and help locate appropriate blog RSS feeds to send to the reader. Before turning over the keys, we will also spend 3 months monitoring the listening system with you and tweaking the alerts and feeds to be most appropriate for your business. All for only $995. For details, call 800-888-9115.

If you missed the webinar, and are wondering why this could be important to your business, you can watch the webinar here.

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Unions, Crime, and The Mob

Paula Dorsey worked at the Milwaukee Public Library, and managed to run up a gambling debt of over $200,000. How so on her salary? She was also the president of District Council 48 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), and embezzled over $180,000 of dues-payer’s money to feed her addiction. After the bank called to inquire about unusual transactions, she turned herself in, and was sentenced to just 3 years probation.

Should you believe that unions and organized crime are no longer joined at the hip, two more former members of the International Longshoremen’s Association in New Jersey have recently been indicted for crimes tied directly to the Genovese crime family. Albert Cernadas Sr., a former vice president of the ILA and president of ILA Local 1235 in Newark, pleaded guilty five years ago to charges involving thousands of dollars in union funds being funneled into a pharmaceutical company controlled by organized crime. In the new indictment, the charges involve a far larger conspiracy going back over 20 years, and allege that Cernadas forced cash payments from his members every year around Christmas time by use of “actual and threatened force, violence and fear.”

Robert Ruiz, a delegate for Local 1235 of the ILA, was charged with extorting union members, collecting cash to turn over to the Genovese family as Christmas tribute. Two informants ratted out Ruiz to the FBI, after Ruiz left the money in the care of one of the informants for a short time. “[The informant’s] understanding was that he could lose his job … or could be killed if he did not make a payment every year at approximately Christmastime,” Department of Labor special agent Jonathan Mellone stated in an affidavit.

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SEIU Interest In Higher Ed

The Service Employees interest in institutions of higher learning has nothing to do with education, and everything to do with finding sources for dues extraction. Its latest target appears to be cafeteria workers in university campuses. Much like their Justice for Janitors initiative designed to place all cleaning personnel in a particular city under a global contract, they hope to group all of the employees at various cafeterias in a city into a single bargaining unit.

While the SEIU attempts to find its footing after the abrupt departure of Andy Stern for greener pastures, SEIU still finds itself with a reputation in need of repair. The Tea Party Nation recently named SEIU in a list of the 5 top liberal hate groups of 2010. According the TPN report, “SEIU is a group that has not been shy in using violence against companies who refused their efforts to unionize and have not been shy about using violence against Tea Party members.”

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Same Song, Second Verse

The United Autoworkers plans to take another run at the U.S. assembly plants of foreign automakers, beginning this month. UAW President Bob King was good enough to warn the CEOs of the automakers by letter, explaining that he wanted to organize their plants and “cooperate to improve performance.” Supposedly he could point to the debacle of the U.S. automaker bailouts as an example of “improved performance…?” King has not revealed who the first target will be, or how the CEOs responded.

King released a document intended to be the roadmap for the organizing drive, titled “UAW Principles for Fair Union Elections.” The document outlines 11 ideals designed to give the union leverage in an organizing campaign. King hopes to persuade the automakers to abide by the “principles,” but if they don’t, he’s announced he’s willing to tap into the $800 million UAW strike reserves to fund the organizing effort, which he implies could get nasty. “We’ve really built up capacity to really take direct actions,” King boasted, and warned that for any manufactured who rebuffs their efforts “there will be strong and direct action from the UAW and our allies.”

Among those allies aligning for the effort are Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition, the Detroit bureau of the NAACP, and the Ohio-based Farm Labor Organizing Committee.

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Another Union-Created Bailout?

In the last two years, 15 municipalities have sought bankruptcy protection. Their financial woes were partly fueled by pay and benefit packages, particularly pension benefits, of their unionized employees. Although bankrupt municipalities in Michigan may not seem to be a problem for a rancher in Oklahoma, if the federal government steps in to create another tax-funded bailout, the connection becomes direct.

California has already come begging to Congress, and thankfully the 111th cohort said “no.” There currently exists no provision for states to declare bankruptcy, and this may force Congress’ hand to drain taxpayer pockets for more “bailouts” unless some mechanism can be found to offer states a way out.

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Corporate Campaign Before the Doors Open

The Teamsters didn’t even wait until VWR International could open the doors of its new 500,000 square foot distribution center in Visalia, CA, before they brought pressure to bear in the form of a lawsuit. The Teamsters levied charges that the company has not complied with environmental specifications, despite the fact that Visalia’s Assistant City Manager Mike Olmos claims the facility has fulfilled all the necessary obligations. It would appear the Teamsters are already angling to snag the 150 new employees as union members.

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Sticky Fingers

Current charges or sentences of embezzling union officials:

Stanley Barringer AFGE $22,180
Karl Youngerman GMP $18,218
Mark Tracy IBT $125,000
Stennett Bernard USW $4,320
Roody Lespinasse USW $712
Andy Alerte USW $551
Manuel Nogueira USW $1,384
Fidel Garza AFGE $84,000
Larry White UEW $11,875
Delores Jennings CWA $2,479
Aaron Hunter IAFF $30,000

http://www.nlpc.org/union-corruption-update

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