Macy’s Workers Reject Attempt to Form Union

In what one labor expert called a “bellwether election” regardless of the vote, workers at three Macy’s stores in Costa Mesa have resoundingly rejected a proposal for union representation after a yearlong effort.

In two days of voting, 541 of the 818 eligible employees at Macy’s stores in South Coast Plaza and Crystal Court cast ballots against union representation while 149 voted for it.

After the ballots were counted late Saturday, the anti-union forces were savoring their victory.

“The people spoke, literally,” said Gerardo Quijano, a Macy’s men’s store salesman who led the fight against the unions. “The numbers were just so lopsided, it was overwhelming.”

Despite the defeat, the election was important to labor because it marked the first time in at least a decade that workers at a Southern California department store have managed to force a vote to organize.

It takes approval of 30% of the employees to force such a vote, and labor experts say union success in gaining that level of support could spur similar efforts elsewhere.

No Southern California department stores are unionized. The drive at Macy’s was a joint effort by the Teamsters and United Food and Commercial Workers unions.

“What we’re looking at there is a bellwether election in an important economic area in a high visibility store,” UC Berkeley labor expert Harley Shaiken said before the votes were counted.

“The fact that there was a vote at all, that unions were confident enough to bring it to a vote, even if they lose by a large margin, reflects the fact that Macy’s is certainly on the radar screen.”

But union sentiment at Macy’s apparently waned in the long struggle to get this far. The final tally gave the unions only 21% of the vote.

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The voting process itself was “very businesslike,” said Joseph F. Vella, vice president of employee relations for Macy’s parent company, Federated Department Stores Inc.

About 100 employees were in line waiting to cast ballots when voting began at 8:30 Friday morning. The voting proceeded throughout the day and into Saturday.

The union drive was launched a year ago by Karen Moeller, a cosmetics saleswoman who said she wanted to improve employee compensation, benefits and job security.

“We have no job security, no job seniority here,” said Moeller. She said she has not had a raise in three years.

Once the drive began, Macy’s began “fighting us tooth and nail,” Moeller said.

At the time she started the drive, she said, she had to sell $17,000 worth of cosmetics a month, almost twice the $9,900 monthly quota the previous year.

After the unions began seeking members, Quijano, 24, started waging an anti-union campaign, collecting 200 signatures from workers opposed to the unions.

Quijano said his base hourly rate is $7.80, which, with commission, generally raises his gross hourly rate to $10 to $11 an hour.

“It’s worked out pretty good for me,” the Huntington Beach resident said.

He said he declined the company’s offer to bump his base rate to $9 an hour because that would have also raised his sales quota, making it harder to earn commission.

Vella said most of Macy’s full-time workers make an “exceptional living.”

The losing side will have an opportunity to file objections regarding the election with the National Labor Relations Board, which would then conduct an investigation.

A union loss means a new election cannot be held for at least a year.

The first attempt to organize a Federated-owned department store in Orange County was launched in December 1997, at Bloomingdale’s Home Store at Fashion Island in Newport Beach.

Luggage salesman Michael Paul said he started the campaign after the store’s management failed to keep promises regarding compensation and benefits. Bloomingdale’s employees said they were fed up with what they considered unrealistically high sales quotas that effectively erased commissions and upset over other employee issues.

Paul contacted the Teamsters because he was impressed with the union’s successful 1996 strike against United Parcel Service of America.

The Bloomingdale’s campaign got off to a strong start as pro-union employees quickly gathered support at the home store, which only had about 60 employees.

But the company argued before the labor board that the home store and the fashion store are actually operated as one unit, although they are physically separate. The fashion store had about 250 employees.

Meanwhile, Macy’s quickly got involved. Last January, employees began circulating cards to authorize union representation for Macy’s. Eventually, the Macy’s campaign took center stage, as Bloomingdale’s workers stood back to watch the outcome.

Paul said before the ballots were counted that even if the unions lose, the fight is not over.

“We knew this was going to take a long time,” he said. “Nobody believed we could get this far against the big corporation. . . . “

Since the campaigns began at Orange County Federated stores, Teamsters organizers have said they have been contacted by interested employees from other Bloomingdale’s stores in Southern California. Bloomingdale’s also has stores in Beverly Hills, Century City and Sherman Oaks.

But Federated has been successful at keeping unions at bay. Only 21 of the company’s 400 stores have union representation, Vella said. Two Macy’s West stores in San Francisco were unionized before they were purchased by Macy’s and later by Federated, he said.