Archbishop Takes On Union Organizers

Los Angeles Archbishop Roger M. Mahony is embroiled in an increasingly ugly local labor dispute with national implications, and he is using many tactics typical of anti-union campaigns.

Mahony, who has long associated with liberal, pro-worker, pro-union causes, is waging a strong, though legal, campaign against unionization of 140 gravediggers in the archdiocese.

Mahony’s actions could hurt all unions, since employers can logically conclude that the conduct of one of the leaders of the Catholic Church shows that he believes nothing is morally wrong with vigorous anti-union campaigns.

While the archbishop insists that he is not opposed to unions, the moves he and his advisers made could have come out of a textbook on how to fight unions.

In fact, the labor consultant hired by the archdiocese, Carlos Restropo, is widely regarded as a “union buster” who recently was given the “No Heart Award” by the Los Angeles County Labor Federation for his role in battling many unions.

The gravediggers dispute dates back to March, 1988, when several of the workers asked the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers for help.

One issue was wages. The local archdiocese pays from $6 to $7.85 an hour. Unionized gravediggers at Catholic cemeteries in the San Francisco Bay Area average $14.95; in New York, they average is $12.38.

The union campaign seemed successful: 120 of the 140 workers--almost all are Catholic Latino immigrants--signed cards asking to be represented by the union.

Mahony counterattacked in several ways because of what he said in a phone conversation last week was the “extremely hostile, strident, anti-Catholic tactics of the union.”

The archbishop said he heard in private conversations with workers, although not in writing, that the union “lied about us, said we were operating a slave market, and that if the union lost I would take away the gains I gave the workers since I came here in 1986.”

Barbara Mejia, the union’s Southern California manager, and Christina Vasquez, chief organizer, indignantly denied Mahony’s charges.

Mejia said the accusation was “almost obviously untrue.” It would have been unbelievably stupid for the union to attack “the church we love when we are trying to appeal to mostly Catholic workers to join the union,” she said.

To defeat the union, Mahony first refused to accept the signed cards as evidence that the workers wanted a union.

He wrote the union: “If I were to bypass the services of the National Labor Relations Board, I would be denying our workers the very rights and protection to which they are entitled in this country.”

Confident of victory, the union quickly agreed to ask the NLRB to conduct a secret ballot union representation election.

But then Mahony’s attorney, Ben Goldman, immediately proceeded to argue before the NLRB that the agency should not conduct an election because gravediggers are “religious workers” and an NLRB election would illegally “entangle” the government in church affairs.

The archbishop said last week that he actually did want the NLRB-conducted election, and his lawyer raised questions about NLRB involvement only “on orders of the NLRB hearing officer.”

However, union attorney David Rosenfeld said the church-state issue came up only after it was raised by the archdiocesan lawyer.

In any case, the NLRB regional office decided that gravediggers are religious workers, and no NLRB election was held.

The union then asked that the California Mediation Service conduct the election. Mahony agreed, but it was delayed for months, giving him more time to meet personally with the workers to tell them, as he did in a letter, about the wage and benefit gains he gave them without having to pay union dues.

He also warned that if the union wins, “all of your wages, benefits and working conditions . . . could be lost, changed or diminished during (contract) negotiations.”

Mahony’s warning came despite federal law prohibiting employers from threatening cuts in wages or benefits if workers vote for a union. Mahony, however, doesn’t have to follow the law because the local NLRB official said he is exempt.

Other moves that, if NLRB rules applied in this case, might be prohibited were merit raises he gave after the union petitioned for an election and also his request that the workers form their own independent “Catholic Cemeteries Employees Assn.”

Employers are not allowed to help create a “company union” to fend off a union organizing drive or give pay increases that might be seen as a bribe to get workers to vote against union representation.

Mahony says the pay increases were not anti-union tricks because they had been planned “long before we heard of the union.” But the union says neither it nor the workers had been told about any planned increases until after the union asked to represent the workers.

Finally, nearly a year after the union campaign began, an election was held in February. The union won, 66 to 62.

But Mahony refused to accept the results, alleging unspecified “gang-connected” threats were made against workers opposed to the union--a charge the union ridiculed.

He didn’t accuse the union of such threats, but said a neutral arbitrator must decide if the threats were actually made and were serious enough to set aside the election. Hearings are planned soon.

Whether or not the archbishop of the most populous archdiocese in the nation ultimately defeats the union, he seems to have clearly indicated by example that he approves of anti-union campaigns.

It is not only another unfortunate blow to organized labor, but seems to run counter to the church’s endorsement of collective bargaining and his own past support of unions.