Unions Allowed Voice in Some Job Relocations : * Workplace: The National Labor Relations Board ruling says companies must bargain, in certain cases, when shifting jobs to other plants.

A unionized company that wants to relocate jobs to another plant has in some cases a legal obligation to bargain with its union over the decision, the National Labor Relations Board ruled Friday in Washington.

The ruling is not likely to significantly affect the number of plant relocations, experts in labor and management said. It contains several exemptions and does not require a company to cancel a relocation even when a union offers economic concessions to keep the jobs from moving.

Still, the decision represents an important pro-union shift in the way the NLRB views the continual power struggle between an employer’s right to make management decisions and a union’s right to bargain for its members, experts said.

By a 5-0 vote, the NLRB reversed its 1987 decision that held that a packing house’s transfer of 600 hog-butchering jobs from Iowa to Illinois was not subject to collective bargaining.

The National Labor Relations Act requires employers and unions to bargain in good faith over wages, hours and “other terms and conditions of employment.” Court rulings have forced management to bargain such issues as subcontracting of union jobs to non-union firms. They have also established that plant closure decisions are firmly in the power of management and need not be bargained.

However, the issue of transferring jobs from one plant to another--a phenomenon that is more common than the simple closing of a business--remained a gray area.

Unions, which now represent only 12% of private-sector workers, have long contended that many plant moves have been made strictly to allow a company to relocate in cheaper, non-union regions of the nation.

In its new ruling, the NLRB held that if a company transfers jobs to another plant strictly because of a bargaining issue such as wages, the move itself is subject to bargaining too.

The ruling reduced the degree of proof unions have to bring to the NLRB to trigger an investigation of whether an employer is required to bargain before transferring union jobs. It placed a much higher burden of proof on the employer. The employer must demonstrate that reasons other than wages--such as purchasing modern equipment or environmental controls--are responsible for the job transfer.

Experts in management and labor said Friday that an obligation to bargain will not likely head off many plant moves. But they stressed that increased bargaining will allow unions to obtain crucial financial information about the company and could in some cases lead to compromises in which management kept the jobs from moving in exchange for union concessions.

Theoretically, experts said, management in some cases would be under more pressure to listen to union representatives or risk being found guilty of unfair labor practices.

Robert Dufek, a Washington management attorney who teaches law at Georgetown University, said the ruling might well affect “fringe” bargaining relationships, in which a company and union had dealt at arm’s length.

The obligation to bargain “can give the union that doesn’t have a lot of bargaining leverage the leverage it needs to at least get to the table and deal with wage issues that may be at the root of the company’s decision to move,” Dufek said.

“From the point of view of labor, it’s an important step in the right direction,” said Eugene Cotton, a Chicago attorney who represented a Dubuque, Iowa, local of the United Food & Commercial Workers in the NLRB case.

Friday’s ruling ordered Dubuque Packing Co. to pay back wages to the 600 UFCW members who lost their jobs when the company relocated their work from Dubuque to Rochelle, Ill., in 1981, after refusing to bargain with the union.

The packing company said Friday that it would appeal the ruling.

After the NLRB sided with the company in 1987, the union appealed the case. In 1989, a federal appeals court in Washington ordered the NLRB to rehear the case. The appeals court urged the NLRB to craft a ruling that better conformed to previous U.S. Supreme Court decisions. However, the appeals court acknowledged that striking a proper balance between union job security and management rights presented “hard questions--indeed, some of the most polarizing questions in contemporary labor law.”