L.A. Archdiocese Delays Union Vote by Gravediggers

A new controversy emerged Monday in a months-long campaign by workers at the cemeteries of the Los Angeles Roman Catholic Archdiocese to form a union.

The archdiocese announced that it will delay for one month holding a vote on whether the workers want a union. In November, the archdiocese and the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers said that a representation election among the 140 workers would be held Jan. 13.

But Monday the archdiocese issued a statement saying that the election will be held Feb. 10. The election is to be supervised by the state Mediation and Conciliation Service.

The archdiocese said it was necessary to put off the vote “because some cemetery workers reported harassment and attempts to intimidate them by union supporters.”

Charges Denied

Cristina Vasquez, a key organizer for the ACTWU, said the intimidation charges are baseless. She and other labor officials asserted that Archbishop Roger M. Mahony was attempting to delay the election in an attempt to persuade workers to vote against union representation.

“They’re trying to gain more time to kill the campaign,” Vasquez said.

“This has all the earmarks of an anti-union campaign,” said David Sickler, western regional director of the AFL-CIO. “This is not an issue between ACTWU and the church. This is an issue of workers’ rights. These workers have come seeking collective bargaining rights. Over 90% of the workers want the union.”

The organizing campaign started in the spring and the workers first publicly announced their desire to have a union at a rally in July. They have been sparring with the archdiocese since then.

Election Delay Protested

Monday morning, according to ACTWU leaders, letters from 99 of the 140 gravediggers were delivered to the archdiocese protesting the election delay. The letters asserted that the decision to delay the election “is a show of bad faith” by the archdiocese. “We have been fighting for over nine months just for the opportunity to vote in secret whether or not we want to be represented by Local 10 ACTWU. It is our right and we demand that it be respected.”

The letters said the workers still plan to conduct a vote Jan. 13, supervised by an impartial third party, at the archdiocese’s 10 cemeteries in Los Angeles, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. Vasquez said the workers have no confidence that the archdiocese will adhere to the Feb. 10 date.

Mahony has long been a supporter of unions and workers’ rights and has maintained that he is not opposed to unionization of the gravediggers. However, Vasquez noted that Mahony declined last June to grant voluntary recognition to the workers after being presented with cards showing that a majority of workers wanted union representation.

Jurisdiction Declined

She also noted that after the archbishop advised the workers to petition the National Labor Relations Board for a representation election, Mahony had his lawyers urge the board to decline jurisdiction on grounds that the employees are “religious” workers and are therefore exempt from coverage under the National Labor Relations Act. The regional director of the board in Los Angeles agreed with the archdiocese’s position.

The union filed an appeal but agreed to withdraw it when Mahony decided to allow another independent third party to supervise a representation election.

Mahony also had his aides form an employee association after the unionization campaign started. The union argued that this was an illegal attempt to have an employer-dominated labor organization, but the ACTWU dropped the charge when Mahony agreed to an election.