Herald News (Passaic County, NJ), January 22, 2005, Sunday

Herald News (Passaic County, NJ)

January 22, 2005 Saturday
All Editions

SECTION: OUR TOWNS; Pg. B01

HEADLINE: Store denies bid to bust union;
Janitors replaced by cleaning contractor

BYLINE: By BRIAN SPADORA, Herald News, North Jersey Media Group

BODY:
The dismissal of unionized janitors from Linens 'n Things' corporate headquarters last month illustrates a common union-busting technique, labor experts said Thursday.
The 10 workers were dismissed when Linens 'n Things hired a new cleaning contractor, Janitorial Environmental Services of Morris Plains, to service its Brighton Avenue headquarters. The dismissal came six months after the workers joined the Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ in Newark.
The Passaic County freeholders on Tuesday urged Janitorial Environmental Services "to rehire the janitors who have lost their jobs at Linens 'n Things and provide living wages and benefits."
Companies use contractors to circumvent unions, said Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of Labor Education Research at Cornell University.
"It's a very common practice," she said Thursday. "Basically, companies have tried to use hiring contracted workers to avoid unions and to break unions for a long, long time."
Federal laws governing how a company must deal with contracted workers are much less strict than laws governing a company's dealings with its own employees, Bronfenbrenner said.
"The difference between a contract worker and a union worker is a huge difference," she said.
Companies can distance themselves from the negative conditions of contract workers by passing blame to the contracted company, she said. As a result, contracted workers typically earn lower wages, work less regular hours and have fewer benefits, she said.
The workers at Linens 'n Things earned $7 an hour last year, said Kevin Brown, New Jersey district chairman for the SEIU. Their contract would have raised wages each year until they reached $10 an hour in October 2007, he said.
The non-union employees who replaced the 10 janitors earn $6 an hour or less, Cathy Thomas, lead delegate for the SEIU Local 32BJ, said Thursday.
The use of contracted workers is one of the factors that have reduced the number of union workers nationwide, Bronfenbrenner said.
The number of workers who belong to unions in the United States fell by 369,000 in 2003 to 15.8 million, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. The number of U.S. workers represented by unions has fallen to 12.9 percent of the work force from 20.1 percent in 1983, according to the bureau's Web site.
Toni Vardiman, assistant to the chairman and chief executive officer for Linens 'n Things, said Thursday that the change of cleaning contractors "had nothing to do with union versus non-union."
Vardiman said the company used to have a building management company that hired a cleaning company. When Linens 'n Things took over that responsibility, the company hired Janitorial Environmental Services after an open bidding process, she said.
Vardiman said she did not know if Janitorial Environmental Services was the lowest bidder.
SEIU Local 32BJ is preparing to file an appeal of the workers' dismissals with the National Labor Relations Board, Thomas said.
Reach Brian Spadora at (973) 569-7132 or spadora@northjersey.com.