NLRB Accuses Sprint of Illegal Shutdown of Unit
Federal labor officials on Monday accused Sprint Corp. of illegally shutting down a Spanish-language telemarketing company to thwart union organizing by its 235 employees.
Sprint denied the accusation and said its sole reason for the shutdown, eight days before a scheduled union election, was that the San Francisco subsidiary was a money loser.
But the National Labor Relations Board’s regional office said it found more than 50 instances of illegal anti-union conduct by management of La Conexion Familiar, the Sprint-owned firm that closed July 14.
Various managers ordered employees not to talk about the union, conducted surveillance of union activities, threatened to fire union supporters and threatened to close the plant if workers voted for the union, the NLRB office said in a formal complaint.
The complaint seeks to require Sprint to reopen the office, rehire the workers and repay their lost wages.
The case is to be heard in November by an NLRB hearing officer, whose findings will be submitted to the board. Either side could then take the case to a federal appeals court.
The board will also decide in the next week or two whether to ask a federal judge to order the office reopened while the case is pending, said Joseph Norvelli, regional attorney in the San Francisco office. He said those orders are being sought increasingly by the current NLRB, whose chairman, William Gould, was appointed by President Clinton.
Sprint, a long-distance telephone company based in Kansas City, Mo., bought La Conexion Familiar in 1992 to sell long-distance services to Spanish-speaking households. Most of the employees were women who spoke little English and made $7 an hour, according to the Communications Workers of America, which sought to organize the employees.
The union said 70% of the eligible employees signed petitions to the NLRB for a representation election, which was scheduled for July 22. On July 14, the union said, workers were abruptly told over the loudspeaker that they were being fired and were ordered to pack their belongings, submit to a search and leave.
In its complaint, the NLRB office quoted Maurice Rosas, general manager of La Conexion Familiar, as telling employees later that day that the office had been closed because the workers had sought union representation.
But Sprint spokesman Bill White said Monday that the shutdown was unrelated to the scheduled election and was entirely due to the subsidiary’s loss of customers and money. He said La Conexion Familiar’s customer base had dropped from 200,000 to 85,000 and that the unit was losing 650 customers a day in May and June.
“LCF was unprofitable, and even under our most optimistic projections and assumptions we could not project a profit in the foreseeable future,” White said.
