NLRB Chairman Dotson Goes on the Offensive

Donald L. Dotson, the beleaguered chairman of the National Labor Relations Board, should be feeling secure in his ability to continue guiding the board in its pro-management direction now that all five members are Reagan appointees.

Last Thursday, the Senate completed the Reagan complement by confirming the appointments of Wilfred (Bud) Johansen, an NLRB career officer from Los Angeles, and Marshall B. Babson, a management attorney from New Haven, Conn. But Dotson, who has headed the agency since November, 1982, still isn’t happy because, he says, his enemies now include even members of the Reagan Administration.

He and his chief legal counsel, Charles M. Williamson, have been besieging all major newspapers and magazines for many months with letters accusing them of inaccurate or false reporting of NLRB decisions and the often bitter infighting at the agency.

Apparently concerned that those letters were not getting enough attention, Dotson’s office last week distributed to the news media copies of a speech he had made two weeks before to the Central Piedmont Employers Assn., a conservative employer association in Charlotte, N.C.

In his talk to the association’s employer relations committee on May 8, Dotson attacked all his presumed enemies in the news media, unions, the academic community, the Democratic Party and even “those inside a conservative Administration who lack the technical expertise in labor law and have only limited experience in evaluating the rhetoric of institutional labor.”

Unions have been harshly critical of NLRB rulings, but Dotson defends them, saying that he is only trying to reduce government involvement in collective bargaining and that the board is just trying “to return the law to the middle ground” between labor and management.

Labor laws have been devised, among other reasons, to help protect workers against abuses by employers. As a result, it is natural that many workers and unions would object to Dotson’s view that there should be less “government involvement in collective bargaining,” since that means less enforcement.

But Dotson said that he and those board members who vote with him face “those who seek more government intervention, those who seek to create a labor board that will rewrite our labor laws by administrative fiat (and) never cease by day or night from striving to achieve their ends. They have an efficient, far-reaching propaganda machine.”

He then called on the conservative North Carolina employers to help “change the terms of the public debate concerning labor issues.”

If that effort fails, he warned, the NLRB “will inevitably drift back into the stagnating waters of government restraints and coercion. Our national labor policy is too important to the success of the President’s economic program and the economic health of the United States to allow that to happen.”

Williamson, Dotson’s aide, recently wrote a letter, published in Business Week, elaborating on the NLRB chairman’s concerns about his foes.

Williamson wrote that “there is a small, naive and ambitious group inside the Administration who fail to grasp that they are being used by the liberal press, institutional labor and some academics for anti-Administration purposes.” He did not accuse anyone in the Administration by name.

The NLRB’s political complexion almost inevitably changes with each change in presidential administrations, and both labor and management over the years have come to expect some shifts in the nature of NLRB decisions.

But Dotson’s own extensive and seemingly increasing list of enemies and his open appeal for help from some of America’s most conservative employers makes it clear that workers and their unions can expect only increasingly harsh decisions if the chairman remains in his position.

Unions Move Against B&D;

Organized labor is mounting a massive campaign to counter a $100-million, three-year advertising campaign by Black & Decker that is designed to persuade consumers that it can make General Electric housewares as efficiently with cheap, non-union labor as GE did with union labor.

Last year, Black & Decker bought a 42-year-old, unionized plant in Allentown, Pa., from GE, which also sold Black & Decker the right to make such GE products as toasters, percolators and other small appliances. In a move to consolidate operations, Black & Decker said it would close the plant, which employs 850 union workers, early next year.

While some of the workers will move to Black & Decker’s non-union plant in Brockville, Pa., their wages will drop substantially from the current $10 an hour. Black & Decker, which employs 23,000 workers worldwide, has no union members in its U.S. manufacturing plants.

What infuriates the union and its members most is that Allentown has been a profitable, productive and well-maintained plant. The closing will mean the loss in the Lehigh Valley area of a $17-million annual payroll and about $300,000 in taxes for the community.

In addition to facing an angry union, Black & Decker, whose main product line consists of heavy power tools, also has the awesome task of substituting its own name for the famed GE brand.

To achieve this, it hired the advertising agency of Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn to convince consumers that its household products are up to GE’s standards. The firm’s ads use the theme that Black & Decker’s products are a “new force in household products.”

To protest BBDO’s acceptance of an assignment to advertise what the union calls the “job-busting, union-busting” Black & Decker, members of the United Electrical Workers will hold a rally Friday at BBDO’s New York office. In addition, they have set up picket lines at several Black & Decker plants.

The union contends that the firm’s products will not equal the quality of GE’s because Black & Decker’s workers have little experience in making small appliances.

Interestingly, GE was involved in a furious battle with the United Electrical Workers in 1982 when it decided to move its 80-year-old flatiron plant from Ontario, Calif., eliminating nearly 1,000 jobs.

It is difficult for Black & Decker to justify the closing of a profitable plant and the layoffs of hundreds of workers just so that the company can make even greater profits, although some corporate executives counter that their first duty is to their stockholders.

More and more unions are making rules on plant closures part of their union contracts, and the Allentown shutdown is another argument for congressional action to deal with the problem.

When plants like the one in Allentown are closed, workers seldom find jobs of comparable pay. A U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics study last year showed that nearly 5.1 million workers were displaced by plant closures between 1979 and 1984 and that 40% of those did not find jobs. Of the 60% who did, fewer than half found jobs that paid comparable wages.

Perhaps Black & Decker might have done well to follow the unusual, cooperative example set earlier this month by AFL-CIO unions that worked with C.H.B. Foods to help it sell its new brand, American Chunk Light Tuna.

The product is canned on Terminal Island, the last of the tuna canneries still operating on the U.S. mainland. At stake are 1,400 union jobs and, of course, the company’s profits.

Racial Incident at GM Plant

Five white workers in General Motors’ headquarters in Detroit recently beat up a black co-worker in an incident that clearly seemed to have racial overtones.

Ugly as it was, the attack was insignificant compared to the racial battles that raged in Detroit in 1943 and involved that city’s principal union, the United Auto Workers, which was then and still is one of the country’s most progressive unions and is among the strongest fighters for civil rights.

In that fight, the union moved without equivocation against whites who had said they would not continue working on the Packard plant’s engine production on Belle Isle unless GM and the UAW kept black workers out of the plant.

The union denounced its racist members, ousted some from the union for conduct unbecoming union workers and joined the company to help maintain peace in the plant.

The recent incident, which took place about two weeks ago, resulted in the immediate dismissals of two of the whites who were believed to be “ringleaders.” They, however, described the incident as a “prank” and said they were not trying to threaten the black with lynching, as some of those in the vicinity of the fight alleged.

This time, the UAW filed grievances against GM on the part of the fired workers.

The action was not dictated by some newly acquired racist attitudes of its leaders. Federal labor laws, buttressed by many court decisions, require unions to represent all members in their problems with management, regardless of the initial appearance of the merits of the members’ cases.

If the union had refused to file grievances and the two workers ultimately won their case before the courts, the union, not the company, could be required to reimburse the workers for any pay lost during most of the time that they were not working.

The concept of a union’s “duty of fair representation” does not require that the union continue to fight for members it believes are wrong once the grievance has been filed.

UAW leaders seemed to have no sympathy for the white workers involved in the incident. Frank Runnells, UAW regional director in Detroit, immediately demanded the resignation from the union of one of the whites, who is a shop steward.

The black worker, Carl Frazier, who apparently did not suffer serious injuries, was also advised by UAW leaders that he can file union charges against the whites for conduct unbecoming union members, just as the union did when it ousted the racists trying to keep blacks out of the Packard plant in 1943.