Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, Virginia), April 27, 2007, Friday
Copyright 2007 Virginian-Pilot
Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, Virginia)
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News
April 27, 2007 Friday
SECTION: BUSINESS AND FINANCIAL NEWS
HEADLINE: Bill in Congress would affect Smithfield Foods union drive
BYLINE: Philip Walzer, The Virginian-Pilot, Norfolk, Va.
BODY:
Apr. 27--A bill that's halfway through Congress would give unions more options to enlist members -- or, businesses say, more ways to bully workers.
The Employee Free Choice Act would allow unions to represent workers if a majority signed cards. Currently, employers may demand a secret-ballot vote at the work site.
The bill was approved 241-185 by the House in March and awaits Senate action.
The proposal homes in on the latest sticking point between Smithfield Foods and the United Food and Commercial Workers union in the long-running battle to unionize the company's largest plant, in Tar Heel, N.C.
After two failed elections, in which a federal appeals court found that Smithfield intimidated and harassed workers to vote against the union, the UFCW wants to try again, this time using cards. Smithfield said no.
If the bill were enacted, Smithfield would have to accede to the union's request.
The arguments on both sides in Tar Heel mirror the national debate on the bill, with each side predicting mischief from the other.
Gene Bruskin, who is leading the organizing campaign for the food workers union, said the card-signing process, which can occur on or off the work site, would avoid the excesses of the previous Smithfield elections.
"While you were going in to vote, the company was standing out there with sheriffs and shotguns," he said. "They had spied on people and threatened to discharge them.... Absent the company attacks, people would sign up in droves if they knew they could sign up without being punished and threatened."
Dennis Pittman, a spokesman at Smithfield's Tar Heel plant, echoed other business leaders in warning that the card process could open the way to abusive tactics from unions.
"The card check has absolutely no regulation, no oversight and no anonymity," Pittman said. "It just begs for fraudulent actions to take place. It begs for intimidation. It begs for discontent in the workplace after the process is over."
Timothy McConville, an employment lawyer in Norfolk for Willcox & Savage who opposes the bill, said it would reach far beyond Smithfield Foods.
"Everybody ought to be concerned about this," said McConville, who plans a seminar Wednesday warning employers about the bill. "It is going to dramatically increase union organizing activity and union organizers' success."
Both sides agree, however, that the bill doesn't have much of a shot this year.
The House vote broke mostly along party lines. Because Democrats have a slim hold on the Senate, they'd be unlikely to gather 60 votes to overcome any filibuster by Republicans.
Even if the Senate passed the bill, the Bush administration has vowed to veto it, and Democrats have little chance of mustering two-thirds support in either the House or Senate to overturn the veto.
"What the unions are really doing here is paving the way for 2009," said Richard Hurd, a professor of labor relations at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. If they keep the issue alive and a Democrat is elected president in 2008, Hurd said, the bill can be a contender.
It's already gotten the backing of at least one presidential candidate, Democrat John Edwards.
"We need to make it easier for workers to organize themselves into unions," Edwards said in a statement last month after the House passed the bill. "If a Republican can join the Republican Party by signing their name to a card, any worker in America ought to be able to join a union by doing exactly the same thing."
Critics, including McConville and Pittman, say the bill is a desperate grab for more union members after sharp declines. "They have got to do something to turn around this loss of income," Pittman said.
Last month, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 4 percent of Virginia's workers were unionized in 2006, down from 4.8 percent in 2005. Nationally, the figure went from 12.5 percent to 12 percent.
Unions counter that the bill would help workers and lift the nation's economy.
"The single best opportunity for working women and men to get ahead economically is by coming together with co-workers to bargain with their employers to get a better way of life," AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said in a conference call with reporters.
Chris Kimmons, the president of the United Auto Workers' Local 919 in Norfolk, said the card-signing process has proceeded smoothly at local Ford Motor Co. suppliers such as Visteon Corp. and Johnson Controls Inc.
Partly, he said, that's because the card method, also known as "card checks," takes less time than the required steps leading up to an election. In that time, "the company can harass people, intimidate them or turn their mind against the union."
Critics say that works both ways. Smithfield's Pittman noted that the National Labor Relations Board recently suspended organizing activities of an Oregon local of the Service Employees International Union over irregularities in a card-signing drive.
"In the card-check process," said Greg Mourad, the legislation director at the National Right to Work Committee in Springfield, "unions send teams of people to your door and sometimes they don't leave until you sign the card. In no way does it provide a free choice to workers."
The bill contains other provisions that similarly divide business and labor.
Employers could face fines of up to $20,000 if they are found to have violated employees' rights during a union campaign. Also, if a union and company are stalemated in bargaining over the first contract, either party could seek mediation and, if that fails, binding arbitration.
As Hurd, the Cornell professor, sees it, the bill reflects the desire of unions to "change the rules of the game, so that it's more likely that they win organizing campaigns.
"I think they can make a pretty good case that the current situation is not a level playing field," he said. "No one can really argue that employers don't have the upper hand."
But Hurd thinks both sides are overestimating the bill's impact.
"It does not limit employers' right to say something during the campaign," he said. "Unions will still have a difficult time organizing. They still have to persuade workers to join a union.
"They're going to win more campaigns," Hurd said, "but it isn't going to double union membership overnight."
-- Reach Phil Walzer at (757) 222-3864 or phil.walzer@pilotonline.com.
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