Guild Pushes to Use Paper’s E-Mail System to Reach Workers

Labor unions still tack notices on bulletin boards and hand out fliers at plant entrances, but many are quickly realizing that sending e-mail through a company’s computer network is the best way to reach workers.

A dispute between the Washington Post and its employees’ newspaper guild could determine whether companies have to allow such electronic campaigning.

The guild filed an unfair labor practice charge against the Post on Dec. 13 after the newspaper’s executives ordered the union to stop using the Post’s computer system to distribute e-mail bulletins to employees.

The dispute could affect unions across the country if it leads to the first court ruling on whether companies can place union barricades around their computer networks.

The case hinges on a novel question: whether a computer network is merely company equipment or a cyber equivalent of the work spaces to which unions have traditionally been guaranteed access under labor laws.

“This is our property. It’s our computer network,” said Patricia Dunn, vice president of labor relations at the Post. “Employers have the right to limit nonemployees’ access to a company’s equipment.”

But guild officials argue that the computer network is more than just keyboards, monitors and cables--it’s a gathering place for Post workers from around the globe.

“This is the modern-day water cooler,” said Dick Ramsey, administrative officer of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild. “This is where people exchange information about what’s going on.”

The dispute was triggered by an e-mail bulletin the guild sent out in September to most of its 1,300 members at the Post, including workers in editorial, production and circulation departments. The bulletin argued that Post employees should get extra compensation for work they do for the newspaper’s Web site. The bulletin was titled “Working Like a Digital Dog at the Washington Post.”

Days later, the Post fired off a letter ordering the guild to “immediately cease distributing Guild literature to Post employees by e-mail.” The letter noted that the union contract allows the guild to distribute only printed materials at designated bulletin boards and drop-off sites.

Soon after, the guild filed a charge with the National Labor Relations Board, a federal agency with authority to rule on labor disputes. The Baltimore office of the board could rule on the matter within weeks. If it sides with the union and issues a complaint against the Post, the case could be the first of its kind to be heard by an administrative law judge.

For unions, the Internet and e-mail offer the same advantages of efficiency and reach that prompted companies to give workers Net access and e-mail accounts in the first place. But how to make use of these tools has been a delicate question for unions.

The Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, for example, targets employees who are presumably among the most e-mail-inclined in the country, at such Seattle-area companies as Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp. But Marcus Courtney, co-founder of the organization, said it has never used mass e-mailing largely because he fears companies would respond as the Post has, mounting a resource-draining legal fight.

“It gives companies an opportunity to bring down a hammer on union activity,” he said. Amazon has allowed its workers to access the Washington Alliance Web site and to subscribe to the organization’s electronic newsletter. But Courtney said he has no doubt those accommodations would end quickly if the union were to bombard the company with a mass e-mailing.

Courtney also fears that high-tech workers would see such e-mail avalanches as unwelcome “spam.” “We’re concerned we’d annoy them,” he said. But he added that he might be more willing to use mass e-mails if the fledgling alliance--which so far has only 250 members--were in the Newspaper Guild’s position, already organized and operating under a collective bargaining agreement.

Still, the Net has been a valuable tool for the alliance. Last month, Courtney said, Amazon instructed its customer service representatives to tell callers that there was no need for a union at Amazon if callers raised the issue. Within hours, the alliance posted an item on its Web site and issued a newsletter decrying the command as an anti-union act and a violation of labor law. After unflattering media coverage, Amazon backed down the next day, Courtney said.

In cases not involving unions, courts have generally given companies great leeway in restricting access to their computer networks. Last year, for instance, a California court ordered a disgruntled former employee of Intel Corp. to stop sending critical messages about the company to employees via Intel’s e-mail system, ruling that such behavior is a form of trespass.

But the National Labor Relations Board has indicated that unions might deserve an exception to such restrictions. In a handful of disputes similar to the Post case, the board has supported unions’ rights to access a company’s e-mail system.

“We concede that [the network] is company property,” said Barry Kearney, associate general counsel of the board. “But it is also a work area. Employees that used to come together in a [physical] space now come together in a virtual space.”

That position has yet to be tested before a judge or the five-member panel of the National Labor Relations Board. Previous e-mail disputes have ended in settlements. The Post case, in which neither side has shown much room for compromise, could produce the first ruling.