Workers’ Right to Strike Doesn’t Stop at a Nonprofit Agency’s Door

Latino activists are increasingly worried about the implications of union-busting practices at nonprofit community social-service agencies. Can an organization, born of the historical struggle by a disfranchised community to organize, effectively represent and continue to argue for community control of resources and services while it is at the same time attempting to bust its own workers’ organization? Should nonprofit community agencies be permitted to use their public and private donor grants for union-busting?

These practices stand contrary to the ideals on which the service organizations were founded. And such practices can endanger the very existence of community service agencies.

A strike by the unionized work force at El Centro Human Services Corp. is a case in point. It is the largest nonprofit service agency in East Los Angeles. With a work force of 70, it provides bilingual mental-health services to predominantly Latino clients and is a well-respected community institution.

El Centro Human Services Corp. was born from the Chicano movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. At that time, professionals, paraprofessionals, labor activists and community members organized with funds from the federal War on Poverty to give birth to social-service centers for the severely under-serviced Latino community. Their demands echoed those of minority communities throughout the nation for adequate social services and for community control of the institutions providing those services.

Community control would be exerted through a board of directors formed mainly of residents--knowledgeable and sensitive to the community--to set policy, raise funds and establish just personnel practices and priorities to ensure quality services to poor and low-income residents. Ideally the staff would be chosen from concerned and qualified community residents who should have preference for the agency jobs.

Like other nonprofit social-service agencies, El Centro operates with government and private foundation grants. These are in effect contracts for services to eligible clients. Currently it operates with grants from Los Angeles County and privately funded sources like United Way. Like other nonprofit social-service agencies, El Centro has suffered cutbacks in recent years as support for domestic social services has fallen victim to the Reagan revolution.

It is within this context that the dispute has arisen.

More than two months ago the workers at El Centro went out on strike after their efforts to negotiate a contract failed. They are predominantly Latino women, represented by Local 535 of the Service Employees International Union since 1980. They are steadfast trade unionists, but they are conscious of the critical funding situation. In the interest of keeping the agency open with its staff and service intact, they have since agreed to a freeze on wages and a suspension of their bilingual pay and pension plan. The strikers, however, many of whom are single parents with dependent children and residents of East Los Angeles, have refused to accept a reduction in health-care benefits.

The board of directors, which has fought the union since its inception, has responded like the board of an anti-union profit-making corporation. Using the red-herring argument of budget cuts, it has fired many of the workers, including strike leaders, and has begun hiring “permanent replacements,” including some from out of state. In the meantime, patients are being deprived of mental-health services.

These are classic union-busting moves. Furthermore, they are an assault on members of the Latino community and on the principles of accountability of the agency to the community. If El Centro’s board of directors busts the union, it is effectively destroying community control of the agency’s resources and concrete gains made in the struggle for empowerment.

Community grass-roots organizations, as well as the AFL-CIO’s Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, have thrown their weight behind the strikers. They have demanded the reinstatement of all the strikers and have called on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and United Way to make clear to members of El Centro’s administration that they must stop their anti-labor practices and halt the use of social-service grant funds for the purposes of union-busting.

The time has come for El Centro’s board and administrators to act in accordance with its founders’ principles. They should sign a contract, reinstate all the workers to their jobs and stop endangering the existence of the institution.

United Way and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors should support the workers of El Centro. The supervisors, who have advocated respect for the right of workers to organize in Poland, ought to do the same for workers in East Los Angeles and throughout the county.