Restaurant Workers Union Faces Court Test
The theory that unions are fair game for tighter-than-ever government regulations is heading for an unusual test before the courts here.
The Reagan Administration and the courts have demonstrated lately that they are not hesitant about regulating the affairs of unions even though the Administration strongly advocates less government “interference” in the operations of private business.
For example, the Supreme Court decided recently to curb the right of unions to discipline members who resign from the union during a strike.
On the other hand, unions have complained bitterly that employers are being subjected to fewer curbs on their conduct. There is, they charge, a lack of enforcement of laws and regulations involving health and safety; meanwhile, government deregulation of such industries as trucking and airlines has meant substantial job losses.
The new court test involves dissident Spanish-speaking members of the 16,000-member AFL-CIO Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union Local 11, which represents workers in hotels, restaurants and bars in the Los Angeles area.
The case began last year when a few members who speak only Spanish demanded that union leaders have all the local’s meetings conducted in both English and Spanish.
The union’s top officers agreed to the request. The union’s longtime executive secretary, Andrew (Scotty) Allan, even noted that the union’s newspaper, meeting notices, contracts, constitution, bylaws and all other documents have, for many years, been printed in both languages. Individual members routinely ask for translations of discussions at local meetings.
Despite general agreement, the dissidents and officers couldn’t agree on procedures. One proposal by the dissidents was to give each member a headphone so that he or she could hear simultaneous translations. Union leaders countered that the idea would be too costly.
Another proposal was that all members who speak only Spanish be put on one side of the union hall while those who understand English would be on the other. Interpreters would then use microphones to simultaneously translate discussions to the separate groups. Union leaders said this plan would split the membership and create chaos.
When no agreement was forthcoming, three dissidents asked Arturo Morales, an attorney with the Los Angeles Legal Aid Society, to file suit against the officers on Feb. 1, 1984. The suit asked the court to order the union leaders to have all meetings conducted in both languages. Morales contends that nearly half the members speak only Spanish.
The union leaders proposed that, when one member finished talking in English, his words would be translated into Spanish, and vice versa.
That seemed to satisfy the dissidents. The union’s leaders then put the plan to a vote at three different union meetings, but it was voted down each time.
Although the federal Landrum-Griffin Act requires the union leaders to abide by the members’ decision, Morales is pressing the case because the same federal law gives all members the right to “full participation” in union affairs. Those who speak only Spanish, he said, cannot fully participate if the meetings are conducted primarily in English.
The judge is scheduled to rule on the issue soon. If he should decide that the members’ vote should be overruled, the union leaders undoubtedly will appeal. If he decides that their vote should stand, the dissidents plan to appeal.
Thus, once again, the judge will be dealing with a fundamental question that goes beyond the language issue: How far should the government go in regulating the internal affairs of unions, particularly in an era of less regulation in business?
Saturn Pact Criticized
A prominent Detroit-area United Auto Workers dissident infuriated West Coast longshore leaders when he warned the other day that the proposed agreement between the UAW and General Motors’ Saturn Corp. contains elements similar to “disastrous” portions of the longshore union’s contract.
Peter Kelly, head of UAW Local 160 in Warren, Mich., who has been fighting UAW leaders since the days of the late UAW President Walter Reuther, denounced the proposed UAW-Saturn pact as one that could lead to the “demise of the UAW and the trade union movement as we have known it.”
He listed a series of objections to the proposal, which basically involves a precedent-setting degree of labor-management cooperation that Kelly and other dissidents contend goes too far.
Kelly was particularly incensed by the idea of giving “lifetime” job guarantees to 80% of the workers at the planned Saturn plant while leaving 20% as “second-class citizens” who would not be covered by the job security clause.
In the 1970s, Kelly said, the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union, under President Harry Bridges, had negotiated a similar plan that turned out to be a “disastrous situation for that union.”
Actually, the ILWU plan that he criticized was instituted decades ago and, according to both union and management, has worked out very well.
Under the ILWU plan, there are two categories of Longshoremen: class A and class B.
All of the estimated 9,800 longshore workers in California, Oregon and Washington get identical wages, benefits and contract protections. The difference is that class B longshoremen are not dispatched to jobs until all class A longshoremen have been offered job opportunities.
Because the number of waterfront jobs varies daily, the estimated 1,000 class B workers do not get as many assignments as the class A employees. However, class B workers move into the higher group after about five years, on the average.
That delay is “the price new workers pay for the chance to get into the top-rated category,” says Barry Silverman, ILWU’s research director.
But the price isn’t really a high one.
“If you have to be born a worker anywhere in the world, you would want to be born as a West Coast longshoremen,” Silverman said.
He noted that class A workers who are available for jobs are guaranteed 38 hours of pay each week, all year long, at $16.42 an hour. Class B workers are guaranteed 28 hours of the same pay.
Also, the ILWU contract provides that longshoremen are paid at time and a half for all hours worked after 3 p.m. Thus, someone who works eight hours on the regular day shift gets nine hours of compensation. Second-shift workers get time and a half for all hours worked.
After all registered longshoremen in both class A and class B categories are offered jobs, then the companies can hire casuals, who have no job guarantees.
“Our class B members are not second-class citizens. The system simply preserves job opportunities for those with higher seniority. If we did not have this system, it would reduce the average pay for the majority of our members because there would be more workers dividing up the jobs,” Silverman said.
A similar concept is involved in the plan being considered for GM’s Saturn workers: The permanent work force will have, in effect, a “buffer group” of workers between them and layoffs. But the buffer group will have no job guarantees like those provided to class B longshoremen.
Dissident Kelly may have legitimate complaints about the proposed Saturn plan, but he is wrong to contend that a similar plan hasn’t worked out well for longshore workers.
Two-Tier Wage Systems
Union leaders say they are intensifying their fight against permanent, two-tier wage systems, and John Zalusky, a researcher for the national AFL-CIO, said they are having some success at halting the trend.
Fred Krebs, director of employee relations for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, says he hasn’t seen any clear-cut signs of such a reversal, although he knows unions are fighting the plans harder than ever.
Zalusky noted that temporary wage differentials between new and “old” workers are not unusual, with newly hired workers starting off at a lower rate and gradually moving into higher pay categories. It used to be called “a ‘reward for service’ plan,” Zalusky said.
Now, however, companies are trying either to make the wage gap permanent or to extend the time it takes for new workers to move to the regular wage level, he said.
Labor’s opposition to two-tier systems has received a boost from Hughes Aircraft, which gave up such a plan in its recent negotiations with the International Assn. of Machinists.
A company spokesman said Tuesday that, while the idea was “useful” to the company for the three years that it was in effect at Hughes’ plant in Tucson, “we could see that it could become a problem in the future (because) there were just too many ‘we’s’ and ‘they’s’ among the union employees.”
Permanent two-tier wage systems can and often do cause resentment among the lower-paid workers.
Last year, the Air Force temporarily halted payments to Hughes because of “serious deficiencies” in the quality of the firm’s missile production, and Justin Ostro, IAM vice president, contended that poor morale had contributed to the quality problems.
Ostro said his union also eliminated the two-tier system from the recently negotiated three-year contract with General Dynamics’ Pomona plant.
Ostro said IAM leaders at all aerospace companies agreed at a recent conference that they will unite in their fight to get rid of permanent two-tier wage systems and fight vigorously to keep them out of future contracts.
Meanwhile, some companies continue to pursue temporary two-tier systems. In the San Francisco Bay Area, Teamsters Union drivers and warehouse workers for Safeway and Lucky stores are voting by mail on a proposed contract that would, for the first time, pay newly hired workers 70% of the journeyman’s rate. The gap would gradually be eliminated over three years.
But Charles (Chuck) Mack, head of the Teamsters Joint Council 7 in San Francisco, said that most members would reluctantly accept the temporary two-tier structure but that, if they reject the contract, it will be for another reason: a proposed permanent differential in the number of vacation days and holidays.
While it may be easier for management to get workers to approve two-tier contracts than to accept wage freezes or cuts, there seems to be growing evidence that such schemes hurt employee morale, and therefore productivity, and ultimately will do little to aid corporate profits.
