Labor Dispute at Cal Spas Intensifies : Strike: Workers cite low wages and poor benefits and claim the company is impeding efforts to unionize. The manufacturer is being lured to move, and the City Council is caught in the quagmire.
Start with about two hundred Latino workers walking off the job, bitterly complaining that Pomona-based Cal Spas is sabotaging their efforts to unionize.
Add a statewide boycott of Cal Spas showrooms, and a rancorous face-off between the union and company that has degenerated into threats and led to slashed tires, fistfights and even strikers’ claims that company supporters chopped down their shade tree and defecated near their lunch spot.
As if that weren’t enough to complicate the labor dispute at the company, which manufactures fiberglass spas and their wood frames, factor in a Latino-majority City Council trapped in a political quagmire: how to offer moral support to strikers while preventing Cal Spas, from packing up and moving.
City and economic development officials say communities in Arizona and Nevada have been wooing Cal Spas for more than a year, and that its loss would be a blow to Pomona.
“We definitely want the company in Pomona. But I know how difficult it is for the workers, and I feel between a rock and a hard place,” said first-term Councilwoman Cristina Carrizosa, a native of Mexico whose district includes many of the striking workers as well as California Acrylic Industries Inc., known as Cal Spas.
“This company has provided jobs for quite a few years now. The workers feel very proud of the product they make, but they are also family people and they cannot support their families on the salaries they make. We cannot afford for any of the two groups to lose,” Carrizosa said.
Nearly a month after the June 18 walkout, however, both sides have dug in their heels, even as they state their eagerness to resolve the dispute fairly.
Helping to organize a bargaining unit of 500 workers is a United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America international representative with more than 35 years’ experience rallying Latino workers. On the company side is an Orange County law firm that years ago represented Central California growers in their fight against Cesar Chavez’s United Farm Workers.
Cal Spas President Charles S. Hewitt declined through his attorneys to be interviewed, but the company has issued several letters and statements to employees, Pomona officials and community activists rebutting the strikers’ claims.
A company attorney said spa sales last year brought in less than $1 million in profit. He said the privately held company would not release further financial information, except to say production and sales have not suffered during the strike.
About 300 workers remain on the job and the company has replaced almost all of the strikers.
The striking workers--who earn between $4.25 and $7 an hour--say they are seeking union representation in order to make better wages, and to secure health benefits, paid holidays and paid vacations.
More than improving working conditions at the plant, however, strikers say unionizing would ensure that all workers are treated equitably.
“Once I needed a protective belt because my back was injured, and they wouldn’t give it to me. Sometimes one person asks for a raise, and they give it to one and not to another,” said Rosa Alvarez, 52, who has worked at Cal Spas in the wood shop department for six years and makes $6.25 an hour.
One of three women to walk off the job, Alvarez provides the only income to her two teen-age children and husband, who is ill.
“There’s no protection here. You can work like a burro and they’ll still let you go.”
Many complained that pay scales are based on favoritism.
Ernesto Paz, 26, a member of the union organizing committee, has worked at Cal Spas for five years and makes $6 an hour. A memo on letterhead “From the Desk of President Charles S. Hewitt” obtained by strikers, however, outlines a different pay schedule.
According to the chart, those who have worked at the plant for 60 months should be making $7.50.
Many said they simply cannot stay afloat on Cal Spas wages.
“I make $4.50 an hour. I have to pay $500 a month in rent, I have to pay for my gas, my lunch, all my bills, and I have seven children to support,” said two-year Cal Spa worker Jose Orozco, who gathered outside the East Ninth Street plant early this week with about 60 other striking workers to discuss the boycott of Cal Spas outlets and take turns picketing the plant.
The workers, some reclining underneath a Cal Spas trailer and others gathered under a portable awning, were still fuming from an incident that took place before dawn last Friday.
Someone hacked the branches off a tree that had shaded striking workers, leaving a sea of foliage on the ground. An attorney for Cal Spas said company officials deny any role in cutting the branches.
On Monday morning, human excrement fouled the area where strikers have been gathering daily to organize and prepare soup lunches donated by local churches.
Strikers also complain that Pomona police are regularly ticketing their cars, which are parked on public property alongside Cal-Spas trailers, which are not being ticketed. Pomona Police spokesman Leon Sakamoto said it is the department’s policy to issue tickets equitably, and he would look into the workers’ complaints.
In a statement released by Cal Spas’ Irvine attorneys and titled “Public Notice: The Truth Behind Cal Spas’ Labor Dispute,” the company countered strikers’ claims that company policies are unfair.
“Cal-Spas makes no apology for its wage structure. The ONLY employees who make minimum wage are newly hired, unskilled workers,” it said. “No one has talked about the employees who WERE hired at minimum wage, but through hard work, dedication, commitment & proven reliability are now making a good living--supporting their families, driving nice cars, living in nice homes and are assets to their community!”
The statement also notes that Cal Spas offers optional health insurance. Workers--some of whom take home less than $700 a month--said they cannot afford $192 a month to insure a family of four.
And the company’s statement defends its policy of giving workers unpaid vacation during the holiday season by noting that the company gives Christmas bonuses instead.
“Unlike most companies, all Cal Spas employees have the same two weeks off just before Christmas to just after New Years, when pay orders are at a low,” the statement said. “Cal Spas provides unpaid Leaves of Absence over the Holidays so employees may visit families secure in the knowledge that they will return to a job.”
Divergent views of reality have dominated the labor dispute, which took root in January when three employees began discussing working conditions and contacted union representative Humberto Camacho.
“I started talking to the workers. I felt they were treating us like animals and I saw a need for the union,” said Alfredo Carabez, a two-year employee who began the organizing drive and was fired April 26.
Carabez said he was fired after the company issued two warnings. One, he said, was for spending too long in the bathroom, and the other was for complaining that he was being forced to work too fast. He said plenty of workers accumulate four or five warnings without being fired.
After Carabez was fired, the union stepped up the organizing campaign and began issuing leaflets outside the plant, Camacho said.
A petition for a hearing on an election was filed with the National Labor Relations Board on May 28 and a hearing was set for June 17.
On June 11, however, a series of events threw the union election process into disarray.
In the morning, a fight broke out at the plant and a pro-union worker, who was later arrested and has been charged with battery, injured a pro-company worker. Police said the pro-union employee, Cirilo Flores, was holding a pair of pliers in a threatening manner in one hand while he punched with the other.
Union officials say the fight was provoked by another worker who attacked Flores from behind.
The company filed a complaint about the incident with the NLRB, charging that pro-union workers engaged in “threats of violence and acts of violence” at the plant. The complaint delays the election process until the NLRB completes an investigation, which could take months.
The same morning Flores was arrested, Carabez was beaten up outside the plant. According to the union, the assailant was driven to the site by another man whom several pro-union workers recognized as a Cal Spas supplier. Both men entered the plants’ offices after the beating, the workers said.
Police say they can’t find the suspect, and the case is closed.
Within several hours of the incident, Cal-Spas officials circulated a leaflet denying company involvement:
“The company wants all employees to know that the incident that occurred at about 11 a.m. DID NOT involve any employees of Cal-Spas. The incident was one of mutual combat involving an individual who was looking for work and a representative of the union,” it said.
After that incident, Carabez said, his wife received about 10 threatening phone calls and the tires of his car were slashed.
Pro-union workers called for a walkout when they heard the hearing had been delayed, filing their own NLRB complaint claiming the company intentionally sabotaged the union drive.
The union’s NLRB complaint alleges, among other things, that the company fired Carabez for his efforts to organize workers, conspired to have Carabez and Flores beaten for their union activities, conducted illegal surveillance of workers, and bribed some workers to oppose the union drive by promising them raises and benefits
The union last week launched a boycott of Cal Spas facilities “from Sacramento to San Diego,” Camacho said. Union supporters plan to picket Cal Spas showrooms in cities throughout the state, including Costa Mesa, San Diego, Moreno Valley, Temecula, San Bernardino, Ontario, Chatsworth, and Torrance.
Despite the contentious nature of the dispute, union leaders say they are eager to negotiate.
Mayor Eddie Cortez, Carrizosa and Councilman Willie E. White have offered to mediate.
The company has declined, stating that it will pursue the matter through legal channels and wait for a decision by the NLRB. If the labor agency rules that strikers’ claims of unfair labor practices are warranted, the company will be obligated to rehire them. Otherwise, they will likely lose their jobs to the replacement workers Cal Spas has already hired.
Most council members are tiptoeing around the issues surrounding the labor dispute, hoping to bring the conflict to a resolution that satisfies both parties.
Cortez toured the facility after workers complained of health and safety problems. He said he was satisfied by the tour, and prefers to steer clear of the wage dispute.
“I’m a businessman and I don’t go around telling other people what to pay their employees, because I don’t want anyone coming in and telling me what to pay mine,” said Cortez, who runs an automotive shop. “Obviously, if a person doesn’t want to work for X dollars per hour, then he can go work somewhere else. That’s America.
“We just want to mediate. We don’t want to be the decider, or say how much they should pay their workers.”
But other council members say the city has an obligation to try to boost the living standards of its Latino majority, many of whom live in poverty.
“I do not want to see the company leave, but I also want to see the employees provided a better opportunity,” said first-term Councilman Marco Robles, a Latino community activist.
“I think we need to take a very serious stand on this issue and realize that people need to be paid well. Ultimately, it benefits the city as well. People don’t have money to eat or spend it in the city.”
