In This Issue

1. ORGANIZING
   
   
2. STRIKES & LABOR DISPUTES
   
   
3. MAJOR CONTRACT SETTLEMENTS & NEGOTIATIONS
   
   
4. ADMINISTRATIVE & COURT DECISIONS
   
   
5. LEGISLATION & POLITICS
   
   
6. CRIME & CORRUPTION
   
   
7. MISCELLANEOUS
   
   

1. Organizing

• The Communications Workers of America won an election to represent 2,867 fleet and passenger service agents at Piedmont Airlines, after failing at an attempt in 2008.  The vote was conducted under the National Mediation Board’s revised rules for representation elections, which make it easier for airline and railroad industry unions to organize workers.

• Three separate bargaining units totaling 700 workers at Holy Family Hospital in Meuthen, Massachusetts voted for representation by the Service Employees International Union.  The respective bargaining units include 395 service employees, 167 technical employees, and 110 clerical employees.  The SEIU now represents five of the six hospitals in the Caritas Christi Health Care chain in Massachusetts.  Last year Caritas and SEIU negotiated the first master contract that covered employees at Caritas’ then four unionized hospitals.  That contract provided for wage increases, a low-cost health plan, and the creation of five labor-management committees.

• Registered nurses at Osceola Regional Medical Center in Kissimmee, Florida voted for representation by the National Nurses Organizing Committee-Florida, an affiliate of National Nurses United.  Of 495 eligible nurses, 354 voted in favor of union representation and 30 voted against. NNU, the largest U.S. union and professional organization of registered nurses, has organized more than 6,500 nurses in Texas, Missouri, and Nevada this year.

• In the latest fight between the National Union of Healthcare Workers and United Healthcare Workers-West, a division of the SEIU, professional employees in two bargaining units at Kaiser Permanente voted to switch representation from UHW to NUHW, while a third unit voted to remain with UHW.  The rival unions have been battling for members since SEIU placed UHW under trusteeship in early 2009 and ousted the local’s officers and staff, who formed NUHW in response.

• Three groups of Delta Airlines workers voted against union representation in separate representation elections.  Delta flight attendants rejected representation by the Association of Flight Attendants for the airline’s now-combined workforce with Northwest Airlines, meaning that the AFA will be decertified as the representative of approximately 7,100 former Northwest flight attendants and that the combined workforce of approximately 20,000 flight attendants will be unrepresented.  Delta fleet service workers rejected representation by the International Association of Machinists, meaning that IAM will be decertified as the representative of approximately 5,000 ramp service workers of the former Northwest Airlines.  As a result of the vote, over 13,000 baggage handlers, customer service employees, reservation agents, and office and clerical workers will be union free.  Finally, Delta stock clerks and supply attendants also voted against representation by IAM, meaning that IAM will be decertified as the bargaining agent for approximately 250 former Northwest stock clerks and that the airlines’ combined workforce of 673 stock clerks will be unrepresented.  All three elections were held under the National Mediation Board’s revised rules for elections. 

• College dining services employees at Loyola University Chicago and St. Peters College in Jersey City, N.J., opted for representation by UNITE HERE in a card check election.  A majority of the approximately 200 Aramark Corporation employees at Loyola presented cards indicating they wanted UNITE HERE, and the company promptly recognized the union.  At St. Peters, a majority of the 35 eligible employees of Sodexo Inc. voted in a secret-ballot election for Local 100 to be their representative.  Union officials said that at both Jesuit school campuses, students, faculty, clergy, and workers across departments supported workers in the organizing campaign.

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2. Strikes & Labor Disputes

• National Nurses Union notified the Washington [D.C.] Hospital Center that its members intended to engage in a 24-hour strike starting on Nov. 24 to protest unfair labor practices, the hospital’s alleged refusal to bargain with the union or grant the union access to its facility, and the hospital’s implementation of portions of its last contract proposal.  In response the hospital contracted with a staffing agency to provide temporary replacement nurses if the union strikes, and pledged to give the replacement nurses 60 hours of work rather than just one day.  The threatened strike is part of a labor dispute that has been going on since February, when the hospital fired 18 nurses during a major snowstorm.  On Oct. 6 the 1,600-nurse bargaining unit voted to affiliate their independent union, Nurses United of the Capital Area, with NNU. 

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3. Major Contract Settlements & Negotiations

• Members of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 655 ratified a three-year contract with three St. Louis-area grocery store chains.  The agreement, which covers  9,000 workers in at Schnucks, Dierbergs, and Shop ’n Save stores, includes wage increases of 20 cents per hour in the second year of the agreement and 30 cents per hour in the third year.  Workers will also receive bonuses in the first year of the contract.  In addition, the contract maintains current health and welfare benefits, though employees’ weekly contributions to health care premiums will rise $4 each year of the contract.

• The University of California and United Auto Workers Local 2865 reached a tentative collective bargaining agreement covering 11,000 academic student employees, including part-time teaching assistants, graduate student instructors, readers, and graders.  The terms agreement, which is effective from the date of ratification through Sept. 30, 2013, includes wage increases of 2% annually, with possible additional wage increases in the latter two years of the contract if there is an increase in state funding.  The agreement also nearly triples the amount of child care expenses that may be reimbursed to employees and provides for partial tuition remission for out-of-state employees.

• The UAW and Harrah’s Entertainment Inc. settled a first contract covering 800 dealers at Caesars Atlantic City casino.  Although details of the contract were not provided, Harrah’s said it was comparable to a contract reached earlier this year between the UAW and Tropicana Casino and Resort in Atlantic City, which provides for an 18% hourly wage increase over the five-year term.  The UAW and Harrah’s bargained for over three and a half years, a period that featured contentious bargaining, as well as pressure from New Jersey politicians.

• UAW members employed by Navistar International Corp. ratified a four-year contract covering  2,000 employees in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Texas. The agreement provides for a $1,000 ratification bonus and 3% lump-sum payments in the first year of the contract and in 2012; 1% wage increases in 2011 and 2013; annual lump-sum payments in lieu of a profit-sharing plan; a $17,500 retirement incentive for employees who are eligible to retire and a $17,500 buyout incentive for other employees who leave the company; and the elimination of retiree health care and defined-benefit pension plan benefits for new hires.  Under the agreement Navistar, which manufactures heavy- and medium-duty trucks and diesel engines, will also invest $80 million in its Melrose Park, Ill. plant to add a test and validation center to develop new product models.

• Hospital and the Professional Employee Council at Sparrow Hospital, an affiliate of the Michigan Nurses Association, tentatively agreed on a new three-year contract covering 2,100 health care workers at several facilities in and near Lansing, Mich. The agreement averts a potential strike, which union members had authorized, and a threatened lockout by the hospital.  Although details were not released pending ratification, the hospital said the agreement increases nurse staffing levels, provides for a modest increase in wages, and alters health and retirement programs. 

• After six years of negotiations, AirTran Airways pilots represented by the Air Line Pilots Association ratified a five-year collective bargaining agreement that provides for immediate and annual pay increases for more than 1,700 pilots, enhances their benefits, and provides for strict limitations on outsourced flying.  Southwest Airlines’ announcement this fall that it would acquire AirTran spurred the parties to settle before the AirTran pilots are integrated into the contract for Southwest pilots. 

• The Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists tentatively agreed on a three-year contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. The agreement, which covers films and prime-time and pay-television programs, includes a 2% annual wage increase and a 10% increase in employer contributions to the two unions’ pension and retiree health funds. 

• Members of the International Association of Machinists ratified a five-year collective bargaining agreement with Amtrak covering about 600 workers. The agreement, which is similar to those Amtrak reached with several other unions earlier this year, provides for a 14% wage increase over term and requires employees to contribute 15% toward the cost of their health care plan, subject to a cap. 

• Members of seven UAW locals in Indiana, Michigan, and Alabama ratified a five-year contract with auto parts supplier JCIM LLC. The national agreement, which covers 2,400 workers, provides terms and conditions of employment except wages and wage-related economic issues, which are negotiated locally. Under the agreement, workers’ health care premium contribution costs will increase slightly; workers will no longer be required to take vacation leave when plants shut down, but rather may receive unemployment insurance benefits; a new long-term disability insurance benefit will be offered; and a new job security measure for employees who are relocating provides for preferential hiring at other JCIM plants.

• Continental Airlines mechanics represented by the Teamsters Airline Division ratified a new collective bargaining agreement that is effective retroactively from Jan. 1, 2009 to Dec. 31, 2012. The contract covers 3,700 employees, and it provides for wage increases, longevity and shift premiums, signing bonuses, an increase in the number of floating holidays, and medical benefits for technicians on military leave for one year.

• Continental Airlines and the Teamsters reached a tentative agreement on a first labor contract covering 7,600 fleet service workers. If ratified, the agreement would be retroactive to July 1, 2010, and would provide four wage increases over the next 30 months for a total increase of 10.5% over term, strong job security language, profit sharing, shift differential pay, longevity premium increases, and improved displacement and grievance procedures.

• According to a BNA analysis of collective bargaining data for all settlements reported through Nov. 15, the average first-year wage increase was 1.7%, compared with 2.4% for the same period in 2009. Excluding construction and state and local government contracts, the all-settlements average increase was 2.1%, compared with 2.6% a year ago. The average increase for manufacturing was 1.1%, compared with 1.8% in 2009; the non-manufacturing (excluding construction) average increase was 2.5%, compared with 3% in 2009; and the average increase for construction agreements was 0.7%, compared with 1.8% in 2009.  Factoring in lump-sum payments, the all-settlements average first-year wage increase was 1.9%, compared with 2.6% for the same period in 2009.

• An analysis of 54 major collective bargaining agreements covering 332,560 employees reached in Canada during the third quarter of 2010 contained average increases in the base wage rate of 1.8%, down from 2% in the second quarter and 2.1% in the first quarter. The 1.8% figure was lower than the average year-to-date figure of 2% and the 2.4% average for 2009.  Private-sector agreements reached in the third quarter contained an average annual wage increase of 2.2%, while public-sector agreements produced average annual wage increases of 1.3%. The largest average annual wage increases for the third quarter were in primary industries (3.5%), construction (2.3%), and transportation (1.8%).

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4. Administrative & Court Decisions

• The National Labor Relations Board found that FedEx had unlawfully refused to bargain with the Teamsters since it was certified in May, three years after FedEx Home Delivery drivers voted for representation. After the May 2007 election, FedEx challenged the elections results, arguing that the drivers were independent contractors rather than employees. After proceedings before an Administrative Law Judge and the Board, the Board upheld the results of the election and certified the union. The company continued to challenge the validity of the bargaining unit, but the Board held in its October 2010 decision that those contentions had already been raised and rejected, and could not be re-litigated.  FedEx Home Delivery, 356 N.L.R.B. No. 10.

• After the NLRB determined that the Wilshire Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles had unlawfully declared an impasse during bargaining with UNITE HERE Local 11 and unlawfully made unilateral changes to employment terms and conditions, the hotel agreed to pay $1.3 million to individuals and the union health and welfare funds. An administrative law judge had found that the hotel had engaged in “extensive and pervasive” unlawful acts before it declared an impasse, including refusing to furnish relevant information. The Board agreed, finding that the refusal to provide information indicated that the hotel failed to bargain in good faith, and that the hotel’s refusal to provide information and failure to make payments to the health and welfare funds for the benefit of the employees indicated that the parties had not reached a good-faith impasse.  Majestic Towers d/b/a Wilshire Plaza Hotel, NLRB, No. 31-CA-28135.

• The NLRB Regional Director in Seattle directed a decertification election among employees at Tyson Fresh Meats Inc. who are currently represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers union after both parties failed to comply with the notice requirements laid out by the Board in its 2007 decision in Dana Corp., 351 NLRB 434 (2007). After Tyson voluntarily recognized the union and the members ratified a contract, the parties were required to alert the Board and post a notice describing the workers’ rights.  Their failure to do so meant that decertification petitions could not be blocked “for a reasonable period of time” under Dana. Tyson Fresh Meats Inc., N.L.R.B. Reg. Dir., No. 19-RD-3873.

• The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled that Anheuser-Busch Inc. may not be compelled to arbitrate a dispute with the Teamsters regarding the impact that seniority rights have on an employee’s pension benefits.  In a 2-1 decision the court found that the collective bargaining agreement between Anheuser-Busch and IBT Local 783 required arbitration of disputes over seniority rights, but contained an exception for disputes over pension benefits, which had to be resolved pursuant to the mechanism in the pension plan itself.  The case arose when a former Anheuser-Busch employee, who had gone to work as an elected union official, went back to work at the company for one day to restore his full seniority rights under the contract. He then initiated the process of obtaining his pension benefits. After the administrator for the company’s pension plan refused to recognize his seniority rights, the union sought to arbitrate the dispute, but the company refused.  Teamsters Local 783 v. Anheuser-Busch Inc., 6th Cir., No. 09-6065.

• A federal judge in Chicago dismissed a constitutional challenge to an Illinois state law and two executive orders providing for collective bargaining for home health aides. The suit was brought on behalf of approximately 20,000 home health aides currently represented by the SEIU and 4,000 home health aides who voted to remain unrepresented. Collective bargaining for both of these groups was authorized by executive orders from the Illinois governor. As to the union-represented group, the court rejected the plaintiffs’ argument that compulsory union fees violated their First Amendment rights because the U.S. Supreme Court has held that unions may constitutionally charge dissenting employees for the costs of performing exclusive collective bargaining agent duties.  As to the unrepresented group, the court found that the plaintiffs had not shown injury-in-fact, and, therefore, the claims were unripe for adjudication.  Harris v. Quinn, N.D. Ill., No. 10 CV 2477.

• A federal judge ordered Long Island, New York-based Jung Sun Laundry Group, Inc. to reinstate employees who were barred from returning to work after they participated in a three-hour strike to protest the company’s failure to make health and welfare fund payments and cancellation of employees’ health coverage. The judge issued the injunction pending resolution of unfair labor practice charges before the NLRB.  In November 2009, when the contract covering 120 employees expired, approximately 40-50 workers picketed outside the company’s facility for about three hours.  When they offered to return to work without conditions, they were told they had been fired, witnesses said. An administrative law judge found that the company’s failure to reinstate the employees violated § 8(a)(3) of the National Labor Relations Act.  The ALJ also found that Jung Sun violated § 8(a)(5) by failing to make the required health and welfare contributions before the strike. The federal judge found that injunctive relief was appropriate because the company had not, in fact, reinstated all the striking employees. Blyer v. Jung Sun Laundry Grp. Corp., E.D.N.Y., No. 10-cv-2975.

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5. Legislation & Politics

• Voters in Arizona, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Utah approved by wide margins amendments to their states’ constitutions that require secret ballot elections in union representation campaigns. The measures were widely seen as attempts to preempt the federal Employee Free Choice Act, which would give workers the option of selecting union representation based on a majority of workers in the bargaining unit signing authorization cards. Although EFCA passed the House in 2007, the most recent version has languished in Congress since it was introduced in 2009, and its prospects for enactment currently are considered nil. 

• Despite heavy union spending on the midterm elections, union-backed candidates and issues generally fared poorly.  Forty-one Democratic incumbents who had supported the Employee Free Choice Act lost. In addition, voters in San Diego County, California voted to forbid unions from negotiating project labor agreements on construction projects financed by the county. The unions spending the most money on the midterm elections included the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (approximately $90 million), the National Education Association (approximately $40 million), and the Service Employees International Union (approximately $44 million).

• A controversial provision that would have made it easier to organize many FedEx Express workers will be dropped from the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill, the incoming chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee said. The provision would have amended the Railway Labor Act to remove coverage of workers of “express carriers,” except for those workers directly involved in air transportation, and placed them under the National Labor Relations Act rules. Absent the amendment, FedEx Express drivers and other workers will continue to be treated as airline workers, who are subject to stricter RLA rules aimed at minimizing transportation industry strikes and lockouts. The incoming committee chairman, John Mica (R-Fla.), said that passing the FAA bill was one of his priorities for early 2011.

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6. Crime & Corruption

• The former executive secretary-treasurer of the New York City District Council of Carpenters, Michael Forde, was sentenced to 11 years in prison and three years of supervised release, ordered to pay a $50,000 fine, and forfeit $100,000 after pleading guilty to one count of racketeering conspiracy and one count of racketeering for accepting bribes. Forde was the lead defendant in a 2009 indictment charging 10 union officials and contractors with the bribery scheme.  He admitted to having taken hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash bribes since 1994 in exchange for helping contractors avoid paying millions of dollars into union benefit funds, rigging job assignments, lying under oath, and obstructing the investigation into his conduct.

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7. Miscellaneous
   

• Former AFL-CIO President John Sweeney will be awarded a 2010 Presidential Medal of Freedom, President Obama announced. Sweeney is one of 15 recipients of the award, which is the highest civilian recognition in the United States. He has worked in the labor movement since 1961, serving as AFL-CIO President from 1995-2009 and SEIU President from 1980-1995.

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If you have questions about items that appeared in this bulletin, or would like to learn more about any of these topics, please contact William Miossi at (202) 282-5708 or (312) 558-6109, or one of the other Labor & Employment Relations partners listed here:

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