Mahony Sued by Union After He Quits Bargaining on Gravediggers

Two top Los Angeles labor officials accused Roman Catholic Archbishop Roger M. Mahony on Tuesday of dishonesty and hypocrisy in the wake of his recent decision to stop bargaining with a union that won a hard-fought victory to represent workers at the archdiocese’s 10 Los Angeles-area cemeteries.

The Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union filed suit in Los Angeles Superior Court on Tuesday, seeking an injunction to force Mahony to resume negotiations on a new labor contract.

The suit was announced at a press conference that featured the strongest invective yet in a bitter two-year fight between Mahony, long a staunch supporter of organized labor, and local labor leaders over whether 140 cemetery workers should be organized.

The struggle appeared to end last November when a three-member arbitration panel, selected by the archdiocese and the union, ruled 2 to 1 that the union should be the bargaining representative of the gravediggers. Mahony had contested a close representation election won by the union last February.

Negotiations between the two sides on a labor contract did not begin until the middle of last month. Then last week the archdiocese said it would no longer negotiate with the union because of mounting complaints by cemetery workers that they do not want union representation. Instead, Mahony announced, the archdiocese would hold another election among workers.

Under a written agreement governing last year’s election, the archdiocese has a legal obligation to negotiate with the union on a contract for a period of one year after the election. Had the election been supervised by the National Labor Relations Board, that year would have started only when the appeals ended and the election results were certified. However, the NLRB declined to supervise last year’s election, saying it does not have jurisdiction over religious organizations. Instead, the election was conducted under the auspices of the state Mediation and Conciliation Service, which allows parties to draft their own rules.

Mahony now contends that the union’s year of bargaining representation ends Thursday--on the anniversary of the vote, which the union narrowly won, 66-62. The archdiocese will hold a new election Friday.

Union officials on Tuesday called the second vote a stacked deck and said they will refuse to participate. Instead, they hope to obtain an injunction requiring Mahony to negotiate with them through November.

The archdiocese said its decision to hold a new election a year and a day after the first one was made in response to anti-union petitions from 97 of 114 workers at six of the 10 cemeteries. Union officials accused cemetery supervisors of misrepresenting the nature of the petitions to their workers, saying that many workers were told they were simply signing a petition thanking Mahony for raising wages, an action the archdiocese took last year.

William Robertson, executive secretary of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, said at the press conference Tuesday that Mahony is guilty of “hypocritical attitudes.”

David Sickler, an AFL-CIO regional director and one of the three members of the panel that reviewed the election results, said he was “absolutely outraged” by Mahony’s actions and accused the archbishop of dishonesty for initially saying last year’s election should follow NLRB procedures “but then when he loses, saying the hell with that.”

Benjamin E. Goldman, a lawyer representing the archdiocese in the labor dispute, said Mahony was simply interpreting the agreement between the two sides literally. The agreement said the union would have bargaining rights one year from the election, he noted. If the union is angry, it should be angry at itself for not demanding more specific wording, Goldman said.