Union Vote by Cemetery Workers Upheld : Labor: Panel rules against the Roman Catholic Archdiocese, which claimed that the workers had been intimidated by organizers.

Organized labor won a small but bitter struggle against the normally sympathetic Roman Catholic Archdiocese in Los Angeles on Tuesday when a three-member panel upheld the results of an election in which 128 archdiocese cemetery workers narrowly voted for union representation.

The panel, whose members were selected by the archdiocese and the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union, ruled 2 to 1 in favor of February’s vote in which cemetery workers voted 66 to 62 to join the union.

The dispute has been watched closely because Archbishop Roger M. Mahony--for decades a supporter of the labor movement on issues such as unionization of farm workers and raising the state’s minimum wage--had lobbied hard against unionization of the largely Latino work force at 10 cemeteries.

Before the vote, Mahony spoke personally to many of the workers, arguing that unionization was not necessary because improvements in working conditions had been made. After the vote, the archbishop accused textile union organizers of using “confrontational methods” and said some cemetery workers had been threatened and intimidated.

Mahony maintained that, despite his stand, he remains a labor sympathizer. But relationships between the archdiocese and local labor leaders grew strained. Last summer Mahony decided that he would not address the annual Labor Day breakfast of the Catholic Labor Institute, breaking with years of tradition.

At the breakfast labor leaders declined to read a written statement submitted by Mahony in which he said “no one has benefited from this time of tension” and hoped for “the restoration of that unique friendship between us.”

The union election was conducted under the auspices of the state Mediation and Conciliation Service with an agreement that if the results were disputed, they would be resolved by a three-member “agreement committee” headed by Fred Alvarez, a San Francisco attorney who often represents management in labor relations matters.

Alvarez and David Sickler, an AFL-CIO regional director, found that while the organizing campaign included “some widely circulated inappropriate appeals,” including several attempts at intimidation by pro-union cemetery workers, it was not “permeated by confusion, fear or threats of violence such that the atmosphere rendered a fair election impossible.”

Ralph Kennedy, an attorney and former National Labor Relations Board regional director, dissented. “Employees were threatened with physical assaults, discharge, layoff . . . and complaints to the United States Immigration Service because they did not support the union,” he wrote. “The majority opinion, like the conduct it condones, is outrageous.”

Barbara Mejia, manager of the textile union’s California joint board, said she looks forward “to meeting with Archbishop Mahony as soon as possible to start negotiations--and to begin the healing process.”

Efforts to reach Mahony or a representative of the archdiocese for comment were unsuccessful.

Both sides in the dispute agreed that many of the improvements in wages and medical benefits originally sought by the union have been made by the archdiocese since the organizing campaign began more than 18 months ago. Mejia attributed that to union pressure and said her goal now is to adopt a contract that “locks in what the workers currently have.”