A LOOK AHEAD * A refocused AFL-CIO has pushed its workers rights agenda hard in recent years. But with employers also ratcheting up their efforts, the . . . Union Activists Have Their Work Cut Out for Them

Some 1,200 union activists will converge in Los Angeles today for a national AFL-CIO convention that highlights the movement’s reborn zeal to organize workers. Despite all the hoopla, however, attendees don’t need to look far beyond the Convention Center for sobering reminders of what they’re up against.

There’s Pedro Ramirez, a machine operator in La Puente who said he was harassed, punished with dangerous assignments and finally forced out of his $6.75 per hour job after signing a union authorization card.

And Pilar Arellano of Covina, who said that after talking to union organizers she was threatened, followed and eventually fired from her minimum-wage job sorting garbage.

Their cases--both under investigation by the National Labor Relations Board--are extreme, to be sure, and may involve violations of federal laws that protect workers’ rights to organize.

But labor leaders said they are typical in one respect: Employers nearly always fight a union campaign, and hard.

“In the private sector, it almost goes without saying that an employer will retain an anti-union consultant, and the campaign doesn’t stop once you win an election,” said Kirk Adams, AFL-CIO organizing director. “It’s become more comprehensive, more coercive. And, probably most disturbing, it’s become more acceptable.”

As labor takes a more aggressive and sophisticated recruiting approach, employers are responding in kind--aided by a growing fleet of consultants.

Indeed, the managing partner of one prominent law firm said business has been booming since AFL-CIO President John Sweeney began pushing unions to devote more resources to organizing five years ago.

“Since Mr. Sweeney took over, our attendance has shot up dramatically,” said Marty Payson, who leads pricey union-fighting seminars for the law firm of Jackson, Lewis, Schnitzler & Krupman, including one that drew about 25 business owners in Los Angeles last month. “Even better, requests by companies for us to visit with them have skyrocketed.”

With only about 10% of private workers in unions--less than half the share of 20 years ago--labor has little muscle with which to fight back. And despite tripling the resources spent on organizing under Sweeney, unions have not kept pace with the growth of new jobs--adding just 100,000 members last year, while the economy expanded by nearly 2 million.

Just how much of those lackluster results can be blamed on employer resistance, rather than the changing economy or worker ambivalence, is subject to debate among scholars. But there is little doubt that professional union-fighting is growing in response to labor’s new agenda.

In an extensive 1996 survey, Cornell University sociologist Kate Bronfenbrenner found that 91% of employers responded to a campaign by hiring consultants.

Most tactics used were standard, including one-on-one meetings between supervisors and workers and mandatory group sessions with managers. But in a report to a federal commission on plant closures, Bronfenbrenner said some veered close to the line of the law, which among other things, prohibits employers from threatening workers with the loss of their jobs.

When Negotiations Go South

In one not-so-subtle case, management posted a map with a bright red arrow pointing toward Mexico.

Several organizers said employers have been keeping step with their own innovative tactics, including hiring Spanish speakers to communicate with immigrant workers.

“The consultants have now adapted and moved onto the offensive,” said Jon Barton, organizing director for the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. “We picket a store and they have an anti-union group picket us. We do a press conference about violations of workers rights, they do a press conference about workers choosing nonunion. We do paid advertising in Spanish newspapers and radio, they do the same thing. We try to build community and religious support, they then contact many of those same people.”

While conceding that a few bad employers cross ethical and even legal lines in the face of a union campaign, Payson and other management attorneys emphasized that business owners have a legal right to present their side, and said unions often lose because they can’t convince workers that they will benefit from membership.

“Most of our clients stay union-free by working very closely and directly in a non-adversarial relationship with their employees, and the union seeks to drive a wedge in that,” Payson said.

Complaints of unfair practices by either side in a union campaign are handled by the National Labor Relations Board, which also supervises elections.

As assistant regional director of the local NLRB office in Los Angeles, James Small is in a position to see the worst of behavior from both sides. “There are parties that occasionally abuse the system,” he said. “But in the great majority of cases the process works, and it works very well.”

Unions, however, argue that the system is inherently biased toward the employer, who has power over job assignments, promotions and wages.

“It’s a totally imbalanced situation, and anyone who doesn’t see that is missing the big picture,” said Jono Schaefer, who led the successful Justice for Janitors campaign in the early 1990s and is now directing strategic research for the L.A. County Federation of Labor.

But most Americans don’t see it that way. Rather than an uneven struggle between exploited workers and heartless employers, AFL-CIO polls show the common view of labor conflict is that of a fight between powerful equals: corporations and labor bosses.

To counter that image, the AFL-CIO this year launched a major public relations campaign that seeks to put a human face on workers trying to organize, casting labor as an ally of community groups and religious institutions.

Unions are then trying to use that community and religious support to pressure employers into recognizing a union without an NLRB election, simply if a majority of workers sign authorization cards.

Adams ambitiously compared the effort to the civil rights movement of the 1960s. “Today, this [union-fighting] behavior is accepted because for the most part it’s secret,” he said. “We have to shine a light on it and stigmatize the employers who violate workers rights.”

That campaign, called Voice at Work, will be trumpeted today as the labor federation pays tribute to organizing efforts. More than 500 new union members, who will file dramatically across the convention floor as the names of the locals are read aloud, will stand witness to the success of those efforts.

Pedro Ramirez and Pilar Arellano will not be among them.

Ramirez, a 32-year-old immigrant from Durango, Mexico, worked for Closet World in the city of Industry for three years, during a bitter organizing campaign with the carpenters union. He said after signing authorization cards, he and other workers were given difficult assignments and passed over for raises. Some were fired.

Ramirez, who underwent surgery for a job-related back injury last year, said he was harassed after returning to work and left again with a stress-related injury. He is collecting $600 a month in disability payments, is separated from his wife and is in danger of losing his home.

After investigating complaints from Ramirez and more than a dozen other workers, the regional NLRB office took the rare step of ordering the employer to recognize the Brotherhood of Carpenters without an election, finding that the atmosphere was so poisoned a fair vote would be impossible. A hearing on that order, originally set for this week, has been delayed.

A Costly Impasse

Closet World owner Frank Melkonian said he could not discuss the case beyond saying, “It was all fabricated, untrue stuff.” The carpenters are still on the outside, five years and thousands of dollars after their initial contact with Closet World workers.

Arellano, who immigrated from Mexico 20 years ago, worked at Athens Disposal for three months this summer. A week after starting, she signed a union authorization card and began attending meetings with organizers in a nearby park, which she said were filmed by managers.

She said a supervisor gave her a tape recorder and asked her to collect incriminating evidence from other workers involved in the union. She said she and other workers were under constant surveillance, even on bathroom breaks. In early September, after she failed to cooperate, Arellano was fired. “They told me, ‘You want a [union] contract, we don’t need you.’ ”

Her testimony is included with that of 20 other fired workers in a complaint filed Friday by the Brotherhood of Teamsters with the NLRB, seeking a bargaining order similar to that issued in the Closet World case. Athens Disposal owners could not be reached for comment.

Arellano said she is surviving on food handouts from the Teamsters, and hoping to regain her old job of sorting cardboard and glass from household garbage. “When they fired us, we were treated like thieves,” she said. “We want to show everyone how strong we can be.”

* LABOR LINK

The AFL-CIO plans its own Internet access service to bring more members online. C5