Suit Filed in Union Dispute : Van Nuys: An official says eight local members libeled him. The dissidents have criticized the UAW for the impending closure of GM’s auto plant.

With the General Motors plant in Van Nuys set to close this summer, a long-running feud between dissident United Auto Workers members at the plant and the union’s regional director has moved to a new battleground: Van Nuys Superior Court.

In a lawsuit filed there in February, Bruce Lee, head of the union’s nine-state Western region, contends that eight members of the divided UAW local at Van Nuys recently published libelous statements about him. Lee is seeking $1 million in punitive damages.

The suit comes at a time when Lee and other UAW International leaders, facing reelection in June, are under increasing heat for plant closings and layoffs in the automotive and aerospace industries. At the 45-year-old plant in Van Nuys, where the remaining 2,000 workers will lose their jobs in late August, the dissidents blame Lee for not vigorously fighting the closure.

“Basically, Lee has to answer for the union’s plant-closing strategy,” said Mark Masaoka, unit chairman of UAW Local 645 and one of the defendants named in the suit. The others include former Local 645 President Pete Beltran and Joe B. Garcia, the local’s present financial secretary. All eight of the defendants are part of a militant group in the local known as Fighting Back.

Lee, who has clashed with some of the defendants during many of his 10 years as UAW Region 6 director, said in an interview: “They can’t defeat me on solid grounds, so they’re trying to discredit me. They have one purpose, and it’s to destroy the union.”

Indeed, Southern California provides a microcosm of the tensions in the UAW over Team Concept, the name for Japanese-style work rules in which job classifications are minimal and workers perform in small teams. Proponents of Team Concept say it gives workers more say in operating decisions, helping to improve quality and productivity. Its critics argue that the management style increases line speed and puts stress on workers without really giving them any greater say.

In 1986, workers at the Van Nuys plant, at the urging of Lee and other UAW officials, narrowly approved Team Concept. Workers hoped that accepting the program would save a plant that auto analysts had long said was doomed because of its age, distance from suppliers, abrasive labor relations, and poor quality of the Pontiac Firebirds and Chevrolet Camaros made there. But in August, GM, which is grappling with production overcapacity, announced that it would shut down the Van Nuys operation.

Masaoka, who has worked at the Van Nuys plant for 11 years, has been a vocal spokesman against Team Concept from the beginning. “I did not believe that GM would really share in the decision-making of the Van Nuys plant,” the 38-year-old electrician said.

Richard Rios, president of UAW Local 148 at Douglas Aircraft in Long Beach, where Team Concept was also established a few years ago, said: “Bruce was an advocate of Team Concept, and it was a disaster here. I believe he’s out of touch with the rank and file.”

Lee’s suit focuses on three flyers, produced by Fighting Back in February during a local UAW delegate election, that criticized Lee for his work in the UAW Labor Employment & Training Corp.--a nonprofit organization in Bell that Lee founded and heads. LETC, as the UAW affiliate is called, counsels and trains displaced union workers to help them find new jobs. LETC is supported by public funds.

One of the handbills signed by the eight dissidents said Lee had “enriched himself well from his privately owned training and consulting firm” and suggested that Lee and LETC would benefit after the Van Nuys plant shuts down. “His firm is poised to earn millions more in running counseling and retraining programs for us laid-off Van Nuys workers,” it said.

Lee, who has been criticized by dissidents before about his involvement in LETC, said the statements are false. “It’s an independent, nonprofit organization,” he said, his voice rising in anger. “It’s not mine.”

Masaoka, in an interview, said the information in the handbills about LETC came from “trusted sources” but was not independently verified. Nonetheless, Masaoka said he believed that the information was true.

Tax documents filed by LETC with the Internal Revenue Service show that Lee, as LETC’s chairman of the board, was paid $500 during each of LETC’s last two completed fiscal years. Philip Tan, LETC’s vice president of finance, said directors receive $500 for each board meeting they attend, usually one to three times a year.

Tan said that Lee does not get involved in the daily operations of the organization, and that Lee “absolutely does not” get any other compensation from LETC.

LETC, which has about 15 field offices in the state, has more than 150 employees and operates on an annual budget of about $9 million. Most of that money comes from the Department of Labor through the Job Training and Partnership Act.

Masaoka, however, argued that the tax reports did not provide a full picture of LETC’s operations, and he indicated that the defendants were gathering witnesses and evidence that would shed greater light on LETC, including its banking relations, real estate properties, consultant fees and what Masaoka described as a “host of perks available to directors.”

Masaoka added that one of the sources who provided Fighting Back with information about LETC was Gene Leonard, a retired UAW International representative who is a consultant to the UAW local at Douglas Aircraft in Long Beach, where Lee has had a history of conflict with dissidents there.

When contacted, Leonard declined to comment, saying he did not want to jeopardize the defendants’ case.

The Van Nuys election in February ended with Fighting Back winning five out of six UAW delegates who, Masaoka said, are committed to voting against Lee at the union’s constitutional convention in San Diego in June.

Under UAW procedures, each local holds an election to pick a certain number of delegates, depending on the local’s size. The delegates then cast ballots for regional and national officers. So far, Lee has the support of most of the delegates elected in his 50,000-member region, including the four recently chosen at the GM-Toyota joint operation in Fremont, Calif. But the big UAW local at Douglas has yet to hold its delegate election.

Lee’s supporters, however, say the 57-year-old director will win with or without the votes from the Van Nuys local or the one at Douglas. But not taking any chances, they have protested the results of the local election in Van Nuys to UAW headquarters in Detroit on the grounds that Fighting Back reportedly ran an ineligible candidate.

Reg McGhee, a UAW International spokesman, said the protest was being considered, but he declined to comment further on the election or Lee’s suit.

Labor observers say Lee is not likely to be unseated, but they note that his lawsuit reflects the ongoing battle between top leaders of the 900,000-member UAW and dissident members over the issue of union-management cooperation.

Lee and his backers, however, say it was GM that reneged on its word to keep the Van Nuys operation open as a “flex plant,” one that could build models on short notice. “I don’t know how anyone can hold Lee responsible” for the plant closing, said Jerry Shrieves, who is president of the Van Nuys local. “He doesn’t control GM.”

Kathy Tanner, a GM spokesman in Warren, Mich., said the auto maker had never made any promises about the future of the Van Nuys plant. “We had hoped we might make it a flex plant,” she said. “But with excess capacity, it became impossible.”