Appealing to One Ethnic Group While Ignoring Another

The African American and Hispanic workers were bitterly divided and self-segregated from one another at the Family Service Agency San Francisco (FSA) before the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) began an organizing drive at the private agency. An important issue for the Hispanic workers was their desire to speak Spanish to each other on the job and to agency clients. The African American workers believed Spanish should not be spoken whenever employees or clients were present who did not understand Spanish. The union organizer spoke Spanish and conducted union meetings in Spanish with translation into English. African American workers, who were fewer in number than the Hispanic workers, contended the union had virtually ignored them.

The union won the election and the employer filed objections on several grounds. One was that the union had unlawfully used appeals to ethnic prejudice in its campaign. The employer argued that this behavior so tainted the election that the NLRB should set it aside.

The Board refimed to set aside the election and ordered the employer to bargain. The employer appealed this ruling in federal court. “A court will overturn the Board‘s decision to certify a bargainingunit onlywhere the activities ofunion supporters created an atmosphere of fear and coercion which made a free and fair election impossible,” the judges said. When a party is charged with making inflammatory appeals to racial prejudice, the charge will be resolved against the party that made the race-based appeal unless that party can establish the statements were “truthfd and germane to the unionization effort,” the judges said.

Based on the record of the case, the court said the Board could reasonably find that the appeals to the Hispanic workers “were not reckless, capricious, or otherwise em- blematic of an intent to invoke racial hatred.” It was argu- ably true that the union’s appeal to the Hispanic workers and neglect of the African American workers was “lamen- table behavior.” Nevertheless, this had not made it impos- sible to conduct a fair election, the judges held. (See Family Service Agency San Francisco u. NLRB, 163 F.3d 1369.) W

Washington Alliance ofTechnology Workers (WashTech) and has affiliated with the Communications Workers of America. Many of the WashTech members are com- puter programmers who have worked full time for months at Microsoft but are categorized as temporary workers. They did not receive health insurance, pen- sions, or stock benefits. They seek the same rights and benefits as permanent employees for the 6,000 tempo- rary workers at Microsoft and thousands more at other high-tech companies. The group has a website at www.washtech.org.

Labor and Religious Groups: Connections Keep Growing

The National Interfaith Committee for Worker Jus- tice, a coalition of religious and labor leaders, has grown close to 400 percent over the last three years, from 12 groups t o 45 across the nation. For Labor Day 1999, the group mailed an 18-page packet of information to more than 18,600 Catholic parishes. The packets included a letter from AFL-CIO President John J . Sweeney. The Council of Bishops of the United Methodist Church is another group becoming more active in the labor move- ment. It mailed letters t o more than 5,000 of its pastors urging them to include a Labor Day litany in their worship services. For the most part, the religious groups work with labor to improve wages and working condi- tions for the lowest-paid workers, a group that is increasingly a focus of union organizing efforts.

Detroit’s New Casino Industry Brings New Union Members

Organized labor reportedly expects to gain between 8,000 and 13,000 new members as the casino industry comes to Detroit. MGM Grand, Inc., the only casino to open so far, voluntarily agreed in July to recognize the Detroit Casino Council as bargaining agent for its 2,200 workers. A week later, MotorCity Casino, also with about 2,200 workers, did the same.

Union Group at Microsof2 A group of at least 16 temporary employees at

Microsoft Gorp. has formed a bargaining unit called the

Three Unions Join Forces against Kmart

Accusing the Kmart company of “delay and stall” tactics in bargaining and of using illegal actions to thwart campaigns, three unions-the Teamsters, UNITE, and the UAW-recently announced a joint

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corporate campaign to pressure Kmart to change its attitude toward unions. Seven years ago, in 1992, Kmart workers in Chicago voted to join the Team- sters, but they are still working without a contract. In Greensboro, North Carolina, Kmart warehouse work- ers voted to join UNITE in 1993. I t was not until three years later, after a major community corporate cam- paign involving religious and other activists and charges that the employer discriminated against African American employees, that a contract was finally signed. In 1998, Kmart warehouse workers in Pennsylvania and Ohio voted to join the United Auto Workers, but the company and union are still far apart at the bargaining table. These are among the situations that have the unions up in arms against Kmart.

A UAW official said one-third of Kmart’s stores are located in five states with more than 5 million union households. The official warned that, unless the com- pany changes its stance toward unions, it risked losing a substantial portion of its customer base. H

Preventive Tactics

Open Book on Salaries At each store in the Whole Foods Market grocery

chain, any employee can walk into the manager’s office and browse through a notebook that lists every- one in the company and his or her salary and bonus, updated annually. If employees find workers in com- parable jobs whom they believe are paid more, they can ask why and expect an explanation. The company, based in Austin, Texas, has an “open book” policy of sharing information on wages, bonuses, company profit, and other facts with all of its more than 15,000 employees at all 95 of its stores. While this approach would not be appropriate in every company, Whole Foods’ open book policy does serve to dispel rumors and other inaccurate information about wages that may lead to job dissatisfaction.

Whole Foods’ philosophy is “shared fate, shared success,” and all salaries at the nonunion chain are “performance based,” according to a company manager.

While Whole Foods’ policy of total disclosure is radical, consultants say it is part of a gradual trend away from salary secrecy. “One of the keys to a success-

ful compensation plan is the perception of fairness among employees,’’ said Stephen Kellerman, principal of Kellerman &Associates, a human resources consult- ing firm in San Francisco. Kellerman said he has no client who is willing to go as far as Whole Foods, but more and more are willing to disclose ranges of pay within job titles.

Many employers don’t realize that it is illegal to ban employees from discussing salaries, according to the NLRB. Such discussions may constitute protected con- certed activity under federal labor law in which case the employer cannot bar them.

Efforts to prohibit discussion and disclosure of salaries can also be counterproductive, according to Jeffrey Pfeffer, a Stanford University business pro- fessor. “If I tell you, ‘You can’t see the salaries,’ it makes it much more intriguing. You want to know, ‘What are they trying to hide?”’ Whole Foods began its salary disclosure policy 15 years ago, when it was a struggling new company. Its chairman said he did it to put an end to “people constantly making false assumptions about what I was getting paid and others paid.” The company has been named one of the top 100 U.S. companies to work for by Fortune maga- zine for the last two years and last year had $1.4 billion in sales. H

Why Is Card Signing Going On? Q: We have heard rumors we believe to be true- that a

card-signing campaign is underway. To what extent can we find out from our employees what grievances and complaints they have?

A Expressing a willingness to listen to complaints is not enough to violate the law. However, asking employees about complaints or grievances they may have is a violation whenever it is coupled with an express or implied promise to try to correct the sources of em- ployee dissatisfaction. Ifthe sum total ofthe company’s statements leads employees reasonably to believe that management intends to remedy, or consider remedy- ing, conditions employees perceive as deficiencies in their terms and conditions of employment, the Board will find an unfair labor practice. W

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