NLRB Will Seek New Union Election at Vans, Firm Says

Casual footwear maker Vans Inc., which beat back a union campaign earlier this year, said Friday that it faces a new union election in the wake of a complaint to the National Labor Relations Board that it violated federal labor law while battling a Teamsters representation drive.

The labor board’s chief attorney issued the allegations late Thursday and, Vans officials said, informed them that the general counsel’s office will seek an order overturning the April election and setting a date for new balloting.

A hearing on the charges has been scheduled for April 1, 1995.

Labor board and Teamsters officials could not be reached Friday for comment because of the national Veterans Day holiday.

In the April election, Vans employees voted 718-432 to reject the Teamsters’ effort to represent workers at the company’s manufacturing plant in Orange.

Officials of Teamsters Local 396 in Anaheim subsequently filed a spate of unfair labor practice charges against the company.

Craig E. Gosselin, Vans’ vice president and general counsel, said Friday that the labor board dismissed some complaints but ordered a hearing on allegations that Vans officials threatened to fire pro-union workers and to move the factory to Mexico if the union won.

“We maintain that these charges are without merit, but the NLRB disagrees, apparently taking the position that it will take a (hearing) judge to make a decision about who to believe and who not to believe,” Gosselin said.

Among the dismissed charges, Gosselin said, were union allegations that Vans officials tried to influence workers by instituting a pay increase in March, a month before the election; that a pro-union worker was fired for his union activities and that Vans set up a sham employee group to circulate anti-union petitions before the election.

The union had campaigned for more than three months at Vans, which has operated as a non-union shop for all of its 28 years. A central issue in the campaign was the union’s claim that Vans’ workers, who are paid an average of $5.75 an hour, could not afford to make co-payments for the company-sponsored health insurance plan.

Vans officials said that a union victory could jeopardize the financial health of the company, which manufactures canvas shoes and other casual footwear that is sold in more than 30 countries.